Revolut is set for a major expansion push in India after its regional CEO announced plans to gain upwards of 20 million customers in the country by 2030.
Paroma Chatterjee, CEO of Revolut India, told CNBC on October 10 that the UK digital bank sees potential to become “the highest contributor in terms of the number of customers” in India with the upcoming launch of its all-in-one payments platform.
Some of the services soon to become available to Indian customers will be Revolut prepaid cards which include reward points for when customers spend. The payments app will also include a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) wallet to house the prepaid card.
Revolut intends for these services, as well as its existing FX currency card, to help bring in 20 million customers across the next five years.
The neobank intends for this projection to come to fruition by offering various paid subscription packages, such as a free account, a premium account and a metal subscription plan. Revolut is also planning for a children’s account which will come with parental controls.
Revolut’s payment platform is currently only available to Revolut employees in India. However, Chatterjee revealed it has a waiting list of more than 350,00 Indian customers, the largest list in the 40 markets Revolut is active in.
“It has been a very humbling experience. It is the largest ever waitlist Revolut has seen in any of the 40 markets where we launched,” said Chatterjee.
India’s growing digital landscape
Housing one of the largest digital real-time payment rails in the world – Unified Payments Interface (UPI) – India has large-scale growth amongst its population away from cash.
UPI, according to the European Payments Council, has up to 350 million active Indian users. With India having the largest population in the world (1.46 billion), Revolut and Chatterjee intend to capitalise on this increasingly digital-native customer base.
“We expect to convert at least 10% of the 200 million aspiring Indian middle-class young digital natives, which would lead to 20 million customers over the next five years,” said Chatterjee.
Revolut India’s chief also revealed the company aims to process more than $7bn in transaction volume across its initial user base.
Planting the seeds for expansion
During its full-year financial report for 2024, Revolut announced its intentions to continue its global expansion by amassing 100 million global customers in 100 countries.
India was identified as a key market for customer growth back in 2021, when Revolut first launched its mutli-currency FX payments service. Since then, the company continued to deepen its presence in India by receiving a PPI licence from the Reserve Bank of India, enabling it to access UPI for its prepaid card offering.
Now, with a view to offer as many financial services as possible onto one single app, Revolut intends to kickstart its global ambition with India as a primary strategic market.
“We’re starting with payments because unifying payments onto one app for the entire family is a space ripe for disruption, with this segment of customers growing and disposable income increasing,” said Chatterjee.
