FCA picks Revolut for stablecoin issuance from field of 20 applicants

Revolut has spent much of the past year collecting banking licenses instead of just polishing its banking app — and the reason behind that push is becoming clearer. In February, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority picked Revolut for the stablecoins cohort of its regulatory sandbox, one of only four firms chosen from twenty applicants. That selection puts Revolut stablecoin issuance on a concrete regulatory track for the first time, and it signals that Europe’s most valuable private fintech wants to stop renting the pipes that move its customers’ money and start owning them outright.

Key takeaways

• The FCA selected Revolut in February for its stablecoins regulatory sandbox, one of four firms chosen from twenty applicants, to test a sterling-pegged stablecoin.
• Revolut secured a full UK banking license in March 2026, holds an EU banking license, and has filed for a US bank charter — the regulatory groundwork needed to issue and back its own coin.
• Nel corso dell’anno terminato a dicembre 2025, Revolut ha raggiunto ricavi pari a $6 miliardi, in crescita rispetto ai $4 miliardi del 2024, mentre l’utile netto è salito a $1.7 miliardi e customer base of 68.3 million.
• PayPal’s $PYUSD, launched in August 2023, had expanded to 70 markets by March 2026, showing how quickly a rival stablecoin can scale once live.
• The Bank of England has since softened its original sterling stablecoin proposals, swapping planned per-person holding caps for a £40 billion issuance guardrail and lowering the unremunerated reserve requirement from 40% to 30%.

Revolut’s Entry into the FCA Stablecoins Sandbox

Revolut’s sandbox slot is a testing ground, not a launch, but it tells a clear story: the company believes the next decade of payments revenue lives on the settlement layer it doesn’t yet control. The FCA’s own filing describes the experiment in plain terms — a GBP-denominated stablecoin pegged one-to-one to sterling and backed by pound reserve assets, built for customers to buy, hold, sell and move inside the Revolut app before sending it out across public crypto networks.

That framing matters because it separates Revolut’s plan from a purely internal loyalty token. The coin is designed to move on public rails, which means it competes directly with dollar-denominated stablecoins already used for cross-border settlement and merchant payouts. Being chosen for the FCA stablecoins sandbox effectively puts Revolut ahead of most other UK fintechs in the queue to issue a regulated sterling token once the rulebook is finalized.

Licensing Milestones That Enable Stablecoin Issuance

A banking license is what turns a stablecoin idea into something an issuer can actually run on its own balance sheet, and Revolut has now checked that box in its three biggest markets. It secured a full UK banking license in March 2026 after a three-year wait, holds a banking license in the European Union, and has filed for a US bank charter.

From Payment App to Settlement Owner

Those approvals separate a fintech that resells other firms’ payment products from one that can hold reserves, issue regulated instruments and run its own books. A sterling la stablecoin rappresenta il prossimo prodotto logico per un’azienda che ha appena completato l’acquisizione delle autorizzazioni per behave like a bank rather than a bank’s customer. Once Revolut issues its own coin, transfers settle on a ledger it helps control rather than on rails it pays someone else to rent — and the reserve assets sitting behind that coin can generate yield for Revolut instead of a third-party settlement provider.

Revolut’s Financial Growth and Crypto Focus

Revolut’s numbers explain why the company is willing to spend years chasing banking licenses just to control settlement. Nel periodo conclusosi a dicembre 2025, Revolut ha generato ricavi di $6 miliardi, in aumento dai $4 miliardi del 2024, con utile netto climbing to $1.7 billion and a retail customer base reaching 68.3 million.

Wealth and Crypto Revenue Surge

Crypto is doing more than its share of that growth. In 2024, Revolut’s fastest-growing business settore era Wealth, che comprende il suo exchange di criptovalute Revolut X, dove i ricavi hanno registrato un incremento di 298% raggiungendo $647 milioni. L’azienda scaling its crypto-trading revenue at triple-digit rates, while sitting on a customer base the size of a mid-tier national bank, has an obvious incentive to stop paying other firms to settle the transactions running through its own app.

Competitive and Regulatory Context for Stablecoins

Revolut isn’t moving into empty territory — it’s following a path other payment giants have already mapped out, while regulators on both sides of the Atlantic race to catch up with the industry’s pace.

PayPal and the Stablecoin Race

PayPal issued the dollar stablecoin $PYUSD in August 2023, and by March 2026 the company had expanded it to 70 markets, letting consumers buy, hold and send the coin while merchants collect proceeds within minutes instead of waiting days for settlement. A consumer fintech with hundreds of millions of users decided issuing its own dollar was worth the regulatory and operational cost, and Revolut appears to be reading the same map for sterling.

Lo strato infrastrutturale si sta concentrando attorno alla medesima strategia. Stripe ha acquisito la piattaforma stablecoin Bridge per $1.1 miliardi e ha sviluppato Tempo, una blockchain orientata ai pagamenti che ha raccolto $500 milioni con una valutazione di $5 miliardi. Ripple gestisce its own dollar-pegged token, RLUSD. Even the traditional card networks are positioning themselves as stablecoin players rather than defenders of the old system, with Visa and Mastercard both pushing further into stablecoin settlement and acquisitions. Nel momento in cui gli attori che traggono maggior profitto dal sistema attuale iniziano a investire nel nuovo ecosistema, neobanks sitting on top of those rails have little reason to wait.

Bank of England’s Evolving Stablecoin Rules

The regulatory door that makes 2026 the year for UK sterling stablecoin regulation opened with the Bank of England’s consultation on systemic sterling stablecoins, published on 10 November 2025 and closed in February 2026. The original proposal called for issuers to hold up to 60% of their backing in short-term UK gilts, with the remainder parked in unremunerated central bank accounts, and it floated limiti temporanei di £20,000 per singolo individuo e £10 milioni per entità commerciale. Gli emittenti non-sistemici would fall under FCA oversight, while systemic ones would be jointly supervised with the Bank of England.

Those caps drew pushback, and the Bank of England has since moved to loosen them. According to crypto.news, the central bank abandoned the per-coin holding limits in June, replacing them with a temporary £40 billion issuance guardrail for each systemic stablecoin — letting users transact without individual caps. The Bank also cut la quota di riserve che gli emittenti sistemici devono mantenere come depositi presso la banca centrale senza remunerazione è stata ridotta dal 40% al 30%, with the remaining 70% permitted in short-term UK government debt under the steady-state framework.

That shift matters for Revolut’s math. A £20,000 personal cap suits a spending app but starves a treasury product of the float it needs to be profitable; a £40 billion issuance ceiling and a smaller unremunerated-reserve slice give an issuer meaningfully more room to earn yield on the assets backing its coin. The regulatory conversation isn’t confined to London, either. Senior officials from HM Treasury and the US Treasury, along with the Bank of England, the FCA, the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the CFTC, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, met in London on July 8 for the 13th UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group session, according to a joint statement published August 4. US officials briefed their UK counterparts on implementation of the GENIUS Act, America’s federal framework for payment stablecoins, while both sides reaffirmed support for one-to-one backing and closer cross-border coordination. A separate July 14 statement from the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future went further, declaring that “Stablecoins held out as money should be fully backed,” and calling for segregated reserves and timely redemption on both sides of the Atlantic.

For a company like Revolut, filing for a US bank charter while already holding UK and EU licenses, that transatlantic convergence effort is directly relevant: differences in reserve rules, custody requirements and insolvency protections could otherwise force it to build separate stablecoin structures in each market it operates in.

Revolut spent a decade proving it could win customers with un’interfaccia utente superiore. I margini su quella interfaccia sono ormai trasparenti a tutti — customers, competitors and regulators alike — which is exactly why the fight is shifting to who owns the settlement layer underneath. With its sandbox slot secured and its banking licenses in place across the UK, EU and pending in the US, Revolut has effectively told the FCA it intends to be first in line for sterling. Whether that translates into a genuine revenue engine or a defensive checkbox now depends largely on how far the Bank of England keeps loosening the reserve and issuance rules it first proposed just months ago.

FAQ

Why did the FCA select Revolut for its stablecoins regulatory sandbox?

The FCA selected Revolut to test a GBP-pegged stablecoin backed by pound reserve assets, enabling it to innovate in regulated digital payment settlements.

What banking licenses does Revolut hold that enable it to issue a stablecoin?

Revolut has a full UK banking license obtained in March 2026, an EU banking license, and it has filed for a US bank charter.

How does Revolut’s sterling stablecoin plan affect its role in payment settlement?

Issuing its own stablecoin allows Revolut to move from being a payment app that rents settlement rails to owning and controlling the settlement layer, a shift central to its broader neobank payment settlement strategy.

What regulatory requirements has the Bank of England proposed for sterling stablecoins?

The Bank of England originally proposed backing stablecoins with up to 60% in short-term UK gilts, the remainder in unremunerated central bank accounts, and holding caps of £20,000 per individual. It has since replaced those caps with a £40 billion issuance guardrail per systemic stablecoin and reduced the unremunerated reserve requirement to 30%.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.