Fintech giant Revolut has received preliminary conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to move toward establishing a full-service national bank in the United States. The approval follows a March 4 filing with the OCC and FDIC for Revolut Bank US, which would take insured deposits, issue credit cards, make consumer and commercial loans, connect directly to Fedwire and ACH, and support investment and trading services. Revolut says it serves more than 70 million customers across 40 markets and carries a $75 billion valuation from its November 2025 secondary offering. CEO Nik Storonsky called the conditional approval ‘an important first step’ and said it gives Revolut the foundation to bring the full Revolut experience to millions of Americans.
The decision places Revolut in a more demanding regulatory lane than many recent crypto charter approvals. The OCC has conditionally approved or converted charters for Circle, Ripple, Coinbase, Paxos, BitGo, World Liberty Financial and others, but most of those are national trust-bank approvals focused on custody, stablecoin reserves and digital-asset services. They generally do not carry FDIC-insured deposits, credit products or ordinary lending exposure. Revolut’s full-service insured national bank application must clear traditional reviews for capital and liquidity, credit underwriting, BSA and OFAC compliance, Community Reinvestment Act obligations, and risk to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
Within that full-bank group, Nubank received preliminary conditional approval in January for a national bank offering lending, deposits and digital-asset custody, and Upstart received similar preliminary conditional approval in July for a digital insured lender focused on consumer credit. By contrast, bunq was denied over capital, management experience, profitability assumptions and risk to the Deposit Insurance Fund. Revolut’s review has also drawn formal opposition: Fair Finance Watch filed opposition on May 7, the Federal Reserve has pressed Revolut on BSA/OFAC and CRA issues, and Lithuania’s central bank fined the company €3.5 million in 2025 for anti-money-laundering deficiencies, though no confirmed money laundering was identified.
OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould said in August that the OCC had received 40 new charter applications since President Trump took office, 23 involving digital assets, and that many complete applications were resolved within roughly 120 days. Since 2025, the OCC has received 40 de novo charter applications and approved 21, denying two. For Revolut, the bull case is that it eventually joins Nubank and Upstart with conditional approval and expands competition in deposits, cards, remittances and crypto-linked retail finance. The bear case is a bunq-style denial or withdrawal. The result still highlights a two-tier system: custody and stablecoin trust charters are moving faster than full insured deposit-taking banks.
