The Consumer Lending Opportunity Behind Revolut’s Global Ambition Consumer lending has always been the prize pool of banking. In Europe, members of Eurofinas, the federation representing European consumer credit providers, granted €484B in new loans in 2024. Of these, personal loans and revolving credit made up more than 40% of all new lending. This underscores how even in a year where overall consumer credit growth dipped (0.9%), demand for unsecured credit remained resilient. For banks, that resilience matters because lending is where margins live. And for challengers like Revolut, it signals opportunity. Payments and deposits can build scale, but credit is what turns a challenger into a profitable bank.Challenger banks have typically followed a familiar script: start with payments and deposits, then graduate into credit. Nubank in Brazil flipped this model, beginning with lending as its foundation, building one of the world’s most valuable digital banks, as we have decoded in our Nubank Deep Dive.Revolut seems to be warming up to a similar playbook, but with a twist. Instead of going sequentially market by market, it’s attempting to scale personal loans, cards, BNPL, and now mortgages simultaneously across multiple geographies. This sequencing makes lending the cornerstone of its global bank […]