Digital Bank Revolut Is Eyeing A South African Launch

Unlike South Africa's digital banking upstarts, which have focused almost exclusively on the personal banking segment, Revolut's offering includes a wider range of services including multi-currency accounts, fee-free currency exchange, stock and commodity trading, and even cryptocurrency trading.

Revolut's entry into the South African market, if it happens, could therefore lead to a big shift in the broader banking sector and perhaps even threaten the market shares of larger traditional banks.

Revolut continues to explore opportunities for growth in new markets as part of our mission to bring the Revolut app to customers around the world. South Africa is a market we are evaluating, and one we see as attractive, with the potential to offer a unique value proposition to customers in the future. However, we are quite early in the process," Revolut told TechCentral.

Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut started out by offering a prepaid card with low-fee foreign exchange services. It has since evolved to a full-fledged financial 'super app".

Revolut's fight for market share in South Africa will not be easy. Just like Revolut, South Africa's first fully digital bank, TymeBank, also has unicorn status, with a December 2024 valuation pricing the company at 1.5-billion. In its last funding round, TymeBank secured a 150-million investment from one of Revolut's global competitors, Nubank - the world's largest standalone bank. According to Coenraad Jonker, CEO and co-founder of Tyme, the investment by Nubank - whose core markets are Brazil, Mexico and Colombia - is the company's way of indirectly entering the African and Southeast Asian markets through TymeBank.