Revolut plans to start with a $25 million investment in India

CEO Nikolay Storonsky told Business Insider India that the company is about to make an investment of $20 million–$25 million to break into India by the end of 2021.

Also, India is just the first country among others that are on Revolut’s expansion radar over the next 18 months.

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“Revolut will soon apply for a payments and trade licence in India, and later will look at expanding to heavy weight operations like banking,” said Storonsky.

India is known to be a tough place to enter for FinTechs with a wide reliance on cash, stiff banking regulations, and limited internet access compared with other countries.

India is one of the biggest technology markets with a $100 billion FinTech opportunity according to Boston Consulting Group and FICCI.

Revolut plans to launch free products first as subscription offerings will be coming later, hoping for the spread of positive word-of-mouth in its early days in the Indian market.

Just recently, after a year of Revolut’s US launch, the digital bank has applied for a banking license in the country. Revolut is now also offering its business banking products in all 50 states. About 500,000 companies are using Revolut Business in Europe.

However, heavily regulated markets still seem to bring pain to Revolut plans. Revolut has not managed to get a Canadian banking license, this restricted the company from the possibility of offering loans and pose a threat to the incumbent Canadian banks (Scotiabank, CIBC, TD Bank, BMO, and RBC) that dominate the market and therefore the challenger bank has left the Canadian market.

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Still, launching a remittance service in India seems like a good move since India is one of the world’s top remittance recipient countries.

Revolut also stated that it is willing to go through the way of acqusition of Indian companies if this step is needed.