A2Z Fintech
00:52:36 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:52:36] S1: And the irony writes itself. Right? The same year his AI assistant learned to freeze your card in a sentence, a human handed over your passport because an email looked official. [00:52:48] S0: You know, and and, Zubin, there's a postscript to this, and and it's breaking as we record this. It seems like there's a second breach in the same month. This one with DriveWealth, the American broker that used to handle US share trading for Revolut customers. Social engineering again, notice a pattern, on the fourth and fifth of September this month. Names, contact, addresses, employment details, partial account numbers, no passwords, no cards, no identity documents, but thousands of Irish customers amongst those affected. [00:53:21] S1: And and and and he'll say it correctly. This is... Wasn't really Revolut. Right? There was a partner on historical records from before he changed the trading. [00:53:30] S0: That's correct. But it won't matter. Probably. The more regulated you are, and as he realizes, the less anyone cares whose server it was. A bank owns its supply chain. That's what a license, I guess, means. [00:53:46] S1: So the transition from fintech to regular bank isn't a straight road. Right? It's a chicane. And the fastest car in the field is no use if it can't take corners. Right? Like, he needs the best brakes in the world and, I guess, the best steering.
00:53:46 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:53:46] S1: So the transition from fintech to regular bank isn't a straight road. Right? It's a chicane. And the fastest car in the field is no use if it can't take corners. Right? Like, he needs the best brakes in the world and, I guess, the best steering. [00:54:00] S0: You know, it it reminds me. Years ago, I was at a banker's lunch at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and the speaker there was Jackie Stewart, the race car legend. I've forgotten everything else from that day. There was a lot of wine. But I'll never forget this. He says, brakes don't slow you down. They allow you to go faster. [00:54:20] S1: Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Didn't Mario say that? [00:54:26] S0: This is this is also true. But, you know, being profound is forgetting your sources, I suppose. [00:54:31] S1: Alright. Alright. Okay. Okay. I'll it with you. One of you said it. It's still the right. [00:54:36] S0: It's obviously the American who was right. Yeah. But here's the whole point. Compliance isn't what slows Revolut down. Done properly, it's what lets it go faster. Right now, it's carrying racing speed into a corner it hasn't taken before. And let me then use this as a segue to count three. And he pleads to this himself, because it's the empire from two segments ago. A consumer bank in more than 100 countries, he has admitted, runs into sanctions. You cannot do a lot of things in many, many markets. And vetting customers, he admits, has been particularly challenging.
00:54:36 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:54:36] S0: It's obviously the American who was right. Yeah. But here's the whole point. Compliance isn't what slows Revolut down. Done properly, it's what lets it go faster. Right now, it's carrying racing speed into a corner it hasn't taken before. And let me then use this as a segue to count three. And he pleads to this himself, because it's the empire from two segments ago. A consumer bank in more than 100 countries, he has admitted, runs into sanctions. You cannot do a lot of things in many, many markets. And vetting customers, he admits, has been particularly challenging. [00:55:15] S1: And overcompliance also gets punished too. Right? Like November 2025, confirmed revived, froze the accounts of thousands of Russian citizens living legally in Europe on resident permits. Right? So people who couldn't reach their money, their own money for rent. [00:55:31] S0: And and the man at the top has his own Russian paperwork story. Nine days, 10/19/2022, Ukraine designates his father under presidential decree seven two six for running Gazprom Promgas. October 28, the son renounces his Russian citizenship. British since 2013. From that day, British only. [00:55:56] S1: Physicist born in Lviv, sanctioned by the country of his birth for running an engineering firm, the country he moved to. And nine days later, his son gives up the other passport.
00:55:56 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:55:56] S1: Physicist born in Lviv, sanctioned by the country of his birth for running an engineering firm, the country he moved to. And nine days later, his son gives up the other passport. [00:56:07] S0: Two things alongside it plainly. In March 2022, he published a letter condemning the invasion, saying his father is Ukrainian, and Revolut switched the app off in Russia and Belarus, importantly. That was confirmed. And no Western authority has designated his father, not that we could find. [00:56:27] S1: Yeah. And the defense, through a five year UK application, parliamentary committees and security agencies press regulators on his capital, his shareholders, and his data. He faced a file his Western bond rivals never would, and he got the license. [00:56:42] S0: And the file never closes. He built a bank that vets everyone, and he's the one customer it will never finish vetting. [00:56:50] S1: I guess prosecution rests. [00:56:53] S0: Prosecution rests. A freeze nobody knew about, two breaches in a month through the one door he left open and a passport he can't put down. None of it is the test that matters. That one happens on a stock exchange. [00:57:07] S1: Yeah. And and the reporting says a float within two years add up to 200,000,000,000. Right? He told Rubenstein in April it was two years away, and the due listing isn't a whisper. He's confirmed London and New York for a man who spends two years calling a London float irrational.
00:57:07 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:57:07] S1: Yeah. And and the reporting says a float within two years add up to 200,000,000,000. Right? He told Rubenstein in April it was two years away, and the due listing isn't a whisper. He's confirmed London and New York for a man who spends two years calling a London float irrational. [00:57:26] S0: The only precedent. Wise moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq in May, and its multiple stayed tied to the fundamentals, about four and a half times revenue. Revolut's private mark is 19. On Wise's multiple, Revolut is a $27,000,000,000 company. [00:57:46] S1: Well, the precedent says something narrow. Right? Wise went to New York for the multiples and got the liquidity instead. But Wise is a payments utility. Right? Revolut is, what, 80,000,000 customers, a string of new licenses, and a founder with a health tech habit. Right? So New York will pay for a story. It just has to be able to read it, I guess. [00:58:09] S0: And the reader wants what he never had to give, quarterly numbers and a board with teeth. Remember Reed? Shareholders had no real voice when he built Citi's consumer bank. Storonsky has built his with none at all. [00:58:26] S1: And the listing is when they get their voice. Right? [00:58:29] S0: Yeah. Public markets don't remove founder control. They price it every quarter. [00:58:34] S1: You know, and I'll make the other case at full strength. Right? Founder control is the engine. Put that under a quarterly call, and you bought a slower bank. Both are true. And the IPO is where we find out which one the market believes.
00:58:34 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:58:34] S1: You know, and I'll make the other case at full strength. Right? Founder control is the engine. Put that under a quarterly call, and you bought a slower bank. Both are true. And the IPO is where we find out which one the market believes. [00:58:47] S0: And and here's the number that will set the price. Ireland. Four in five adults there use Revolut, he told Rubenstein. But using isn't banking. [00:58:58] S1: Which takes us straight back to the ladder. Right? So four and five is the wedge working. Premise, the account, your salary lands in, is the top rung. And on every other ladder we've looked at, the top rung is credit. People put their salary where they owe money. [00:59:15] S0: So the scar that kept him off the lending rung may be what keeps him off the top. [00:59:22] S1: A 15% teaser can't buy privacy. Right? So think Mexico buys you an account, not the salary. So either he builds a different drop rung, private bank, wealth, the ATM, the store, the places where people keep money rather than own it, or he climbs into a creditor after all. [00:59:41] S0: And that's the decision the listing, I suppose, will force. [00:59:45] S1: Yeah. Then one prediction each, so you can hold us to them, I guess. When the American Bank opens, which he targeted to the first half of next year, his first new product, I don't think it'll be debit. It'll be credit because Durbin makes debit a worse business the day he crosses that 10,000,000,000. I guess the scar meets the spreadsheet, And in America, I guess the spreadsheet wins. Interesting.