Revolut has started offering unsecured personal loans to a select group of customers in the United Kingdom, according to Reuters. The move marks the London-based fintech’s entry into consumer lending, a profitable market long controlled by Britain’s largest banks, including NatWest, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander UK and HSBC.

The loans range from £2,000 to £25,000, with interest rates between 6.9% and 29.3%, Reuters reported. Revolut plans to widen access gradually to its full base of 14 million UK customers over the coming months, rather than launching to everyone at once.

From app to ‘primary bank’

Revolut, now valued at around $115 billion, has spent years building a reputation as a slick everyday spending app. It is now trying to persuade customers to make it their main bank account.

We want to transition from being a very successful everyday spending app and disrupting the market, to become effectively the primary bank of choice for everybody in the UK.

That quote comes from Francesca Carlesi, Revolut’s UK chief executive, who is overseeing the rollout. The lending push follows Revolut receiving its full UK banking licence from the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority on 11 March 2026, which cleared the way for products such as loans and, eventually, mortgages. A UK credit card is also planned, Revolut says, as part of a broader strategy that eventually includes entering the mortgage market.

Lending without decades of data

Unlike traditional banks, which have decades of customer spending and repayment history to draw on, Revolut has had to supplement its underwriting with externally purchased data to assess who qualifies for a loan and at what rate. The company says it has set no target for overall lending volume and intends to grow its loan book slowly.

Revolut also plans to offload much of its lending risk through securitisation, a process of packaging loans and selling them to investors, while keeping its loan-to-deposit ratio close to 6%, far below the ratios typical at established banks. A company spokesperson framed the strategy as one built around customer experience rather than price competition.

That means our growth depends on building things customers value, rather than on interest rates.

The expansion comes as Revolut faces continued scrutiny over its risk and compliance record. In 2025, Lithuania’s central bank imposed a record €3.5 million fine on the firm over shortcomings in its transaction-monitoring controls. Revolut has also topped Financial Ombudsman Service complaint data as the most complained-about UK bank or payment firm for fraud and scam complaints in both 2024 and 2025, according to analysis by consumer group Which?. Separately, Revolut was among the financial firms affected by an hours-long Google Cloud outage in London in October 2026, underscoring the operational risks tied to running a bank built on cloud infrastructure rather than legacy branch systems.

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