Revolut Ltd. is a UK-based financial, technological company, which has its headquarters in London. The primary services offered by the company are banking and investment services. Vlad Yatsenko and Nikolay Storonsky, two entrepreneurs, founded the FinTech firm in July 2015.
The European Central Bank issued the company its specialized bank license, which allowed the company to offer credit services, accept deposits, but prohibited it from providing investment services. The Bank of Lithuania facilitated this license along with granting the company an Electronic Money Institution license.
The firm, in July 2019, started offering its ‘metal plan’ customers the service of commission-free stock trading in NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. This proved to be the game-changer for the UK-based company as, over a few months, it announced multiple deals with big corporations like Visa. In February 2020, the total valuation of the company stood at £4.2 billion, making it the richest financial, technological startup.
The myriad of services offered by the FinTech firm includes fee-free currency exchange, GBP and EUR bank accounts, stock trading, cryptocurrency exchange, debit cards, and P2P payments. Its mobile app allows customers to spend and ATM withdrawals in 120 currencies. It also allows customers to send 29 currencies directly using the app. In addition to all this, customers can use the Revolut mobile app to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Litecoin with fiat currencies.
Over a million European users trust the company and use its platform to trade crypto, invest in the stock market, and avail other pecuniary services. The London-based FinTech firm claims to open 6,000 accounts daily.
Revolut has certainly established itself as one of the most trusted FinTech companies as it looks to expand through the US and the rest of the world. The developers have recently launched the mobile app in the island country, Australia. Not only will the Aussies be able to use their banking and financial services but also effectively trade cryptocurrencies. We discuss the benefits and features that the Aussies can now avail.
Australia’s One-of-a-Kind Cryptocurrency Exchange
Australians have been using the beta version of the Revolut app since 2015. It was only last month when Revolut launched its renewed and updated version of the mobile app in Australia. Now, the FinTech company is offering crypto trading services.
The London-based company, in a statement released on September 3, announced that all its Aussie users will now be able to trade, buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies. As mentioned, the mobile app of Revolut allows users to trade fiat currencies for crypto assets. Now, crypto enthusiasts in Australia will be able to convert their fiats to Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM), and RippleCoin (XRP).
The company declared that customers who are subscribers of its’ metal plan’ can use the app to transfer assets to other users digitally. Australian users will now also be able to use the option of estimating their credit card payments to the near dollar and use their extra funds to purchase or hold crypto assets. The FinTech company is currently working on providing its crypto trading services to its ‘premium’ and ‘standard’ customers.
Matt Baxby, Revolut Australia CEO, believes that buying, selling, and holding of crypto assets can seem intimidating and complicated to inexperienced investors, which would impede Australian investors to access and leverage cryptocurrency as an investment alternative. He added that the Revolut mobile app is a simplified version of any crypto exchange, which means anyone without real experience in the field can also leverage assets, and avail all the features of the app.
The Revolut app, launched for the Australian public last month, offers a variety of conventional financial services. The popularity and reputation of the company is evident in the fact that Aussie users had been using the beta version of the app even before the launch of the app, 25,000. And 30,000 people were already on its waitlist, making the launch a highly anticipated one.
The company’s Head of Crypto, Edward Cooper, said that the company, through its mobile app, is making access to cryptocurrencies easier for Australian investors. He also compared his company’s app launch to that of Internet Explorer that provided the public access to the Internet.
Revolut’s attempt to make inroads in the Australian crypto industry is sensible and practical. In the crypto industry of the world, Australia is growing in consequence. Analytics website, CryptoCompare, reported that the AUD (Australian Dollar) had the average trading volume of 528 Bitcoin (BTC), or $6 million in 24 hours, and is currently ranked 17th globally in terms of BTC volume by currency. However, Aussie investors mostly use the AUD as a conversion medium as a great deal of trading is done in the form of crypto assets.
It can be said that many FinTech companies have been eyeing Australia for a while. The island country is also captivating the attention of some of the globe’s most valued FinTech companies. In January this year, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, Kraken purchased Australia’s oldest crypto exchange at the time, Bit Trade, and became its major shareholder.
After launching Binance Lite Australia in 2019, another big crypto exchange, Binance too, in July, launched a fiat to crypto trading and investment platform for Aussie crypto investors. The platform offered similar services to that of the Revolut app. Users of both exchanges can convert their AUD to crypto assets. Both the platforms now accept the PayID system and the Binance main website also supports AUD deposits via PayID.
Even though Gemini, a major crypto exchange, has no branches in Australia, it’s providing its trading services to crypto investors in the country. The company, in August, announced that it has now enabled its users to trade fiat AUD with crypto assets.
After close examination into the matter, it can clearly be stated that major crypto exchanges have begun to make inroads in the Australian crypto industry. This is because every piece of data available indicates the rising potential of the Australian crypto sector.
