Revolut is making money accessible by driving borderless finance in Latin America

Revolut, the global financial super app with more than 30 million customers worldwide, is on a mission to promote financial inclusion through facilitating cross-border remittances and transfers in 41 countries, with the aim of establishing a seamless and borderless fintech ecosystem. After the successful launch of Brazil the past month of May, Revolut is now looking into LATAM as one of the key geographic areas for expansion.

While Revolut’s international expansion has been strong in the last six months, launching the full app in two countries, Brazil and New Zealand, and now operational in 41 markets, the company now wants to accelerate growth in Latin-American and is doing so by providing customers with the possibility to have a first taste of the Revolut experience via a streamlined version of the app, that allows them to send and receive money easily and without any transfer fee until 30th August 2023.

According to the World Bank, 122 million people in Latin America were considered unbanked in 2021. In an effort to offer these parts of the population an alternative to better manage their finances, Revolut’s “lite” app version will allow customers to send transfers to another Revolut customer for free via Revolut’s P2p system, card transfers, and international bank transfers. The Lite app is already live in Chile and also in other countries around the world like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Armenia, Macao, Azerbaijan. Revolut is now planning to expand to other Latam countries such as Argentina and Ecuador.

Revolut’s LATAM expansion will be of special importance to expat communities in both Spain and Portugal, where the superapp already has almost 3 million customers between both markets. This is specially important for LATAM regions because they traditionally have large communities of expats that send and receive a substantial amount of money every year to their families to and from these countries. In fact from the top 20 expats communities in Spain, 8 are from Latam countries. Therefore, offering them a medium that can simplify this process, making it quicker and cheaper. In Spain, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, more than 880.000 immigrants from Latam countries send money to their home countries at least once a year.

For Portugal, almost 800.000 expats live in the country, with 30% of them being Brazilian, according to data from Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF).. For these communities, the launch of Revolut in Brazil gives them the opportunity to send money to their country of origin in a fast, simple and affordable manner.

Existing customers in Chile have already transferred more than GBP 1.2M with an average transaction amount (sending and receiving) of 800 GBP. 90% of the customers are able to receive money within 24 hours. The top three markets where customers are transferring money are Spain, US and UK. Sending money between Revolut customers is secure, quick and involves no hidden fees*, making Revolut one of the first companies to make it possible to send and receive money instantly in 41 countries across four continents.

In its efforts to build a financially inclusive world for everyone, Revolut also announced recently that it was starting to offer accounts to non-US citizens lawfully in the US, who do not have an SSN/ITIN. There are more than 2.5 million people in the US on some sort of visa and who do not have a SSN or ITIN; of which 1 million are students. This population is generally ignored by financial institutions and, as a result, do not have access to cost-effective financial services and are left with limited options for managing their finances. A clear example of the value of this service is the large remittance corridor that exists between the US and Mexico with more than 60 billion dollars a year. Revolut users in the US can greatly benefit from Revolut’s services to send and receive money to and from the neighboring country. Therefore, Mexico is also one of the most important and upcoming targets on Revolut’s international expansion list.

Revolut is changing that by offering a hassle-free solution, including easy account sign up and access to many of its everyday money management products. This includes international-related features, such as a global debit card, low fee currency exchange and international transfers, and early salary access (up to 2 days).

To start using Revolut, it is necessary to download the app from either Google Play Store or the Apple App Store and sign up, following the instructions. Customers will be asked to verify their identity using a valid ID document. Once the account is created, it is possible to send money easily from the ‘Payments’ section.