Sources: Revolut's US system let criminals steal $20M+ over several months in 2022 before Revolut shut the loophole, equivalent to ~66% of its 2021 net profit
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Context & Ripple Effects
The $20M+ theft lands mid-arc in Revolut's pivot from growth-at-all-costs to licensed bank. After losing £106.5M in 2019 and another $277M operating loss in 2020, the company spent years arguing its unit economics worked — and this US loophole ran for months in 2022, eating roughly two-thirds of its first-year profit.
The timing matters for its regulatory file: the delayed 2022 accounts were the hurdle blocking Revolut's UK banking license bid, and sources say it has since applied for a US bank charter. A multi-month fraud failure inside its US operation is exactly the kind of control history a charter examiner reads.
First-order effects
- Revolut absorbed a direct hit equal to about 66% of its 2021 net profit, turning what would have been its breakthrough profitable year into a near-wash on that line — while affected US customers bore the losses before the loophole was shut.
Second-order effects
- Its pending US bank charter application now carries a documented US-market control failure, raising the bar on the compliance evidence Revolut must present; the same scrutiny applies retroactively to how the 2022 hole was disclosed or explained.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer fintechs converting scale into banking licenses find that regulators price internal controls as heavily as revenue growth — fraud losses become a licensing cost, forcing the build-out of bank-grade monitoring years earlier than the startup playbook would schedule it.
The trend: Fintechs graduating into chartered banks are learning that control failures, not just capital and growth, now set the pace of their regulatory approvals.