Revolut receives French banking licence, making Paris its Western European base

On 10 August 2026 Revolut announced that Revolut Bank S.A. had been granted an unrestricted French banking licence following a joint assessment by the ACPR and the ECB, with the decision adopted by the ECB Governing Council. Revolut said it will open a Western European headquarters in Paris in 2027, hire more than 600 people and invest over EUR 1 billion in the region.

It will begin serving customers in France and then extend to Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, while keeping Revolut Bank UAB in Lithuania as the base for its other EEA operations. Revolut counts about 30 million customers across Western Europe.

Revolut has been building a merchant-acquiring business alongside its consumer bank, and a second EU banking licence changes what it can put behind that. Holding a French licence lets it fund merchant settlement, credit and deposits locally rather than passporting everything out of Vilnius, and it puts a licensed balance sheet next to the SMB acceptance proposition that competes with SumUp, Teya and Zettle.

The Paris headquarters and the EUR 1 billion commitment are also a signal about where challenger balance sheets are being domiciled now that the ECB supervises the entity directly.

Whether the French licence carries the same product restrictions the ECB has applied to other Revolut entities, when merchant acquiring is migrated onto it, and how quickly the Germany, Italy and Spain phases follow.

• revolut.com
• Euronews