Revolut Sets Its Sights on the One Product Australians Rarely Switch

Revolut has spent years being the app Australians reach for on holiday, the one holding a bit of foreign currency or splitting a dinner bill. Now the European fintech wants to be something much harder to become: the place your mortgage lives. Local chief executive Matt Baxby has told Reuters the company is weighing a move into home lending, the most contested corner of Australian banking and the heart of the “Big Four’s” grip on customers.

The timing follows a milestone. In July, Revolut secured a full Australian banking licence, its first anywhere in the Asia Pacific, letting it take deposits and offer savings accounts and credit cards on top of its existing payments and foreign exchange services. Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, NAB, and ANZ together hold at least 70% of the market, with Macquarie muscling in as an unofficial fifth. Mortgages are where that dominance runs deepest.

Why home loans, and why now

Baxby’s logic is that a mortgage is the natural next step once a bank holds a genuine relationship with a customer. It is also a huge and fiercely fought-over market, one every major lender is already chasing hard. Revolut starts from an unusual position for a challenger: roughly 1.2 million Australian customers already on the app, and a local business that is already profitable. Its 2025 revenue reached A$70.8 million, about US$50 million, up 74% on the year, while net interest income jumped 110% to A$17.1 million.

Money is not the constraint. The parent company recently ran a secondary share sale reportedly valuing it above US$100 billion, which would place it ahead of European names like Barclays and Société Générale. Revolut has also pledged to invest close to A$400 million in Australia over five years.

The neobank graveyard

Here is the uncomfortable history. Australian customers are famously reluctant to leave their main bank. Research prepared for the competition regulator found that around 81% had not switched their everyday transaction account in three years. Two homegrown neobanks, Xinja and Volt, folded in 2020 and 2022 after failing to reach scale against the majors. Xinja lured deposits with high rates but could not stand up lending fast enough to cover the cost.

Analysts are split on whether Revolut will fare differently. Joshua Koh of consultancy Simon-Kucher notes that people tend to use neobanks for one narrow reason, usually a better savings rate, while the Big Four keep customers through everyday transaction banking. Others are warmer. A Jarden analyst called Revolut well placed to disrupt in the mould of Macquarie, pointing out that this is not some untested startup but an established bank that is merely new to Australia.

A different starting hand

Baxby’s answer to the skeptics is that Revolut already makes money in Australia through foreign currency transactions and interchange fees, the small payments card networks route to issuing banks on every swipe. Building those revenue engines from scratch, he argues, is the grind that sinks most startup banks, and Revolut simply does not have to. So can a travel card graduate into the account that holds someone’s home loan? That is the real test. A banking licence removes the obstacle. It does not, on its own, undo the habit of a lifetime.