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Revolut is valued at $115 billion, holds more than £50 billion of customer money, and lends out about £2 billion of it. What does a bank that refuses to lend actually do with a deposit, and what happens when the man who built it is the only part that cannot be automated?
In September Nik Storonsky won conditional approval from the OCC to form Revolut Bank US, sat down with the Banque de France in a black suit and a red tie, and watched two data breaches reach Revolut customers inside a fortnight. The founder who spent years being publicly rude about regulators is now dressing for them, and for the investors who will price a Revolut listing at up to $200 billion.
Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala trace Storonsky from Dolgoprudny and the Lehman trading floor to the Revolut of today, and ask whether he has built anything that works when he is not in the room.
Key takeaways:
1. Revolut's scar is Lehman, not Moscow: it lends under 5p of every deposit pound, where Nubank lends roughly 58p.
2. Nubank, Revolut and SoFi run the same flywheel but answer one question differently: a deposit is for credit, for float, or for software.
3. Removing credit risk bought rate risk. When rates fall the float shrinks, as Wise has already shown.
4. Citi, HSBC and Standard Chartered retreating as Revolut advances is one spreadsheet read from opposite ends.
5. Storonsky took judgment out of lending, hiring and investing, and kept all of it in one room: his own.
Topics covered:
- Dolgoprudny, the 1998 default, Phystech and the Lehman floor on 15 September 2008
- A sub-5% loan-to-deposit ratio, the contested 40-50% return on equity, and the ECB's 4.5% capital add-on
- Nubank, Revolut and SoFi: one flywheel, three ladders
- Mexico's 15% savings rate, and the rate risk inside the float
- Forty direct reports, Karma scores and five risk chiefs in seven years
- Revolut Pay, Spanish ATMs, a £500,000 private bank, Revolut People and AIR
- John Reed's Citi, success transfer, and the incumbents' retreat from retail
- Ports versus platforms, and why Durbin may tax the US charter
- The case against: fines, a secret ECB freeze, two breaches and sanctions
- The IPO test, and two closing wagers
Chapters:
Referenced in this episode: Revolut 2025 annual report; Revolut $115bn secondary share sale (July 2026); OCC conditional approval for Revolut Bank US (3 September 2026); ECB restrictions on new EEA products (from July 2025); fraudulent government data requests and the DriveWealth breach (September 2026); Storonsky in conversation with David Rubenstein (April 2026); the FT's Patrick Jenkins in Paris; Citi's 2021 consumer exits; John Reed and Citi's 1977 ATM network; Elon Musk's X.com (1999).
Related episodes: Nubank and the Purple Revolution; Wedge, Ladder, Driver; S2E20 — The Real Price of PayPal.
Hosted by:
Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur.
Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.
For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.
Transcript:
Revolut is valued at $115 billion, holds more than £50 billion of customer money, and lends out about £2 billion of it. What does a bank that refuses to lend actually do with a deposit, and what happens when the man who built it is the only part that cannot be automated?
In September Nik Storonsky won conditional approval from the OCC to form Revolut Bank US, sat down with the Banque de France in a black suit and a red tie, and watched two data breaches reach Revolut customers inside a fortnight. The founder who spent years being publicly rude about regulators is now dressing for them, and for the investors who will price a Revolut listing at up to $200 billion.
Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala trace Storonsky from Dolgoprudny and the Lehman trading floor to the Revolut of today, and ask whether he has built anything that works when he is not in the room.
Key takeaways:
1. Revolut's scar is Lehman, not Moscow: it lends under 5p of every deposit pound, where Nubank lends roughly 58p.
2. Nubank, Revolut and SoFi run the same flywheel but answer one question differently: a deposit is for credit, for float, or for software.
3. Removing credit risk bought rate risk. When rates fall the float shrinks, as Wise has already shown.
4. Citi, HSBC and Standard Chartered retreating as Revolut advances is one spreadsheet read from opposite ends.
5. Storonsky took judgment out of lending, hiring and investing, and kept all of it in one room: his own.
Topics covered:
- Dolgoprudny, the 1998 default, Phystech and the Lehman floor on 15 September 2008
- A sub-5% loan-to-deposit ratio, the contested 40-50% return on equity, and the ECB's 4.5% capital add-on
- Nubank, Revolut and SoFi: one flywheel, three ladders
- Mexico's 15% savings rate, and the rate risk inside the float
- Forty direct reports, Karma scores and five risk chiefs in seven years
- Revolut Pay, Spanish ATMs, a £500,000 private bank, Revolut People and AIR
- John Reed's Citi, success transfer, and the incumbents' retreat from retail
- Ports versus platforms, and why Durbin may tax the US charter
- The case against: fines, a secret ECB freeze, two breaches and sanctions
- The IPO test, and two closing wagers
Chapters:
- (00:00) - Cold open: Nik Storonsky's suit, Washington, April 2026
- (01:09) - A risk episode, and the suit is the tell
- (01:39) - Zuckerberg's hoodie, and a tie for the central bank
- (02:42) - Disclaimer
- (03:31) - Dolgoprudny, 1984: a company town for physicists
- (04:54) - Two currency collapses before he turned fourteen
- (05:42) - The childhood hypothesis versus the trader's arbitrage
- (06:19) - Phystech: raw brain power, then character, then craft
- (06:59) - Lehman, 25 Bank Street, 15 September 2008
- (08:12) - Credit Suisse, and his one rule on complex risk
- (08:56) - Six pence in every pound: the bank that won't lend
- (09:41) - The 40-50% return on equity claim, audited
- (10:24) - Zero risk weights and the ECB's 4.5% add-on
- (11:35) - Nubank vs Revolut: same flywheel, opposite ladders
- (13:27) - SoFi's third ladder: renting out the crown jewels
- (14:02) - What is a deposit for? Credit, float or software
- (14:50) - Mexico's 15% savings rate is a marketing budget
- (16:06) - The float's weather problem: rate cuts and Wise
- (17:02) - Inside the building: forty direct reports
- (17:43) - Jensen Huang's sixty, and the span-of-control question
- (19:36) - Karma: compliance priced into the bonus
- (21:06) - Hiring as a live exam, and millionaires in Krakow
- (22:08) - Five chief risk officers in seven years
- (22:34) - A different clock speed: 80 million customers
- (23:46) - Revolut Pay: an ad network with a checkout attached
- (25:01) - He built ATMs: Barcelona, Madrid, Milan
- (26:14) - Branches as billboards, and a £500,000 private bank
- (26:38) - Revolut People: the HR department became a product
- (27:35) - AIR: when super-app clutter becomes a moat
- (29:39) - The day the assistant moves money
- (29:56) - QuantumLight: taking judgment out of capital
- (31:04) - Risk doesn't vanish, it conserves
- (31:15) - Canary Wharf: Reuters, HSBC and Lehman in one view
- (32:20) - The oldest ambition in banking: to be everywhere
- (32:52) - John Reed, 1977: Citi builds its own ATMs
- (34:22) - Success transfer: Citigold, forty years early
- (35:17) - Nostalgia is not a strategy: the incumbents retreat
- (36:45) - Forty countries live, a hundred targeted
- (37:41) - Same spreadsheet, read from opposite ends
- (38:50) - They banked ports, he banks a platform
- (40:08) - Durbin: the US charter that may cost interchange
- (40:54) - A wager: will Revolut exit a country before 100?
- (41:58) - The founder's stake and the Jamie Dimon comparison
- (43:39) - Project Shasta: borrowing against his own shares
- (44:34) - Not the next Dimon: the next Elon
- (45:30) - Counting the parallels, from first principles to pay
- (47:26) - X.com, 1999: the everything bank Musk lost
- (48:17) - The case against: prosecution and defence
- (49:04) - Count one: fines and a secret ECB freeze
- (50:09) - Count two: 700 passports and a fake Italian request
- (53:02) - A second breach: DriveWealth
- (54:14) - Jackie Stewart: brakes let you go faster
- (55:05) - Count three: sanctions, and his father's designation
- (57:08) - The real test is a stock exchange
- (57:41) - On Wise's multiple, Revolut is a $27 billion company
- (59:02) - Ireland: four in five adults, but not the salary
- (01:00:00) - Closing wagers: credit in America or twenty directs?
- (01:00:47) - Has he built anything that works without him?
- (01:02:41) - Kitesurfing: the one variable he can't control
Referenced in this episode: Revolut 2025 annual report; Revolut $115bn secondary share sale (July 2026); OCC conditional approval for Revolut Bank US (3 September 2026); ECB restrictions on new EEA products (from July 2025); fraudulent government data requests and the DriveWealth breach (September 2026); Storonsky in conversation with David Rubenstein (April 2026); the FT's Patrick Jenkins in Paris; Citi's 2021 consumer exits; John Reed and Citi's 1977 ATM network; Elon Musk's X.com (1999).
Related episodes: Nubank and the Purple Revolution; Wedge, Ladder, Driver; S2E20 — The Real Price of PayPal.
Hosted by:
Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur.
Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.
For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.
Transcript:
Creators and Guests
What is A2Z Fintech?
Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala have spent over 25 years in fintech across Banks, BigTech, and Startups. This is a podcast of them riffing on payments, fintech and everything in between.
[Aman] Zubin, for most of Revolut's life,
Nik Storonsky didn't appear to own a suit.
Steve Jobs had his black turtlenecks.
Storonsky had the crew neck, the quarter
zip, the puffer jacket.
And this April in Washington, he sits down
with David Rubenstein in a charcoal suit.
Open collar, no tie. Rubenstein actually
asked whether an American banking license
means he was cutting his hair.
Storonsky skips the hair part, clearly and
says, I think you definitely need to wear
a suit. Five months later, in a half-built
office in Paris, the FT's Patrick Jenkins
Finds him in a black suit, white shirt,
bright red tie, and the shiniest shoes
imaginable. I had a meeting with Banque de
France.
The man who spent five years being
publicly rude about regulators has dressed
up for one. In finance, a founder changes
his clothes for one of two audiences, the
people about to regulate him or the people
about to buy his shares.
[Zubin] So wait, we're we're doing a
fashion episode.
[Aman] Well, we're doing a risk episode
and the suit is the tell.
Revolut is worth a hundred and fifteen
billion dollars lends out six pence in
every pound it holds, and and by the
reporting is heading for a listing of up
to two hundred billion. One question I'll
plant now and I'll leave alone until the
end. Has he built anything that works when
he's not in the room?
[Zubin] Planted, and and I'll knock down
one of two straight away.
Zuckerberg wore a hoodie to Facebook's IPO
Roadshow in 2012 in the Wall Street,
analysts called it immature.
Six years later he put a suit and a tie on
for Congress.
The market never got the suit, obviously
the regulators did.
[Aman] Yeah. well, look at Storonsky's
dates April, Washington, an American
pending the suit, September, Paris, a
French license and Banque de France, the
tie.
[Zubin] Yeah, so the tie is for the
central bank.
[Aman] And the listing will be the biggest
suit he ever wears.
He told Rubenstein why a bank lists at
all.
Public companies are trusted more.
Over the next hour, the scar that made
him, the ladder he chose, and the machine
he built while accumulating the empire
he's chasing.
Whether he's the next Elon and the case
against, including the breach that's been
in the headlines this month, I should say
two as we go to press.
[Zubin] But aman before we dive in, let's
get the grown up bits out of the way,
This podcast is for information and
entertainment purposes only.
It's not advice. So if you rebuilt your
balance sheet or your wardrobe, as aman
loves to do, because two black shirt
podcasters were admiring a man's shoes,
that but that's between you and your
regulator.
I'm Zubin Vandrevala, just back from
London and I think still in London time.
[Aman] I can imagine. I'm aman narain in
Singapore where it's already tomorrow and
this is A to Z.
[Zubin] let's go back to the beginning and
and it isn't London, right, Aman?
[Aman] It's Dolgoprudny, twenty kilometers
north of Moscow, a town built around one
institute that fed the Soviet nuclear and
space programs.
Nikolai Stornovsky is born there in the
twenty-first of july nineteen eighty-four.
His father, born in Lviv in western
Ukraine, is a physicist at the research
arm of the state gas monopoly, and it's
General Director from September, sorry, I
should say December 2019.
That was sort of confirmed from corporate
registries.
[Zubin] You know, as you were talking
about that aman took took us back to our
the steel city that we were born in, which
was also
[Aman] Yeah, true.
[Zubin] very, very similar. I can almost
picture this town in in in our childhood.
Well anyway, a company town for
physicists.
[Aman] I don't know I don't know what you
be guys have been up to at gr4vy but you
wish you the same market valuation.
[Zubin] Of course, of course, of course.
Well, a company town for physicists and a
father inside the state's most important
company. And the son's own summary in an
interview this month in a socialist system
that you can't really own anything and
being told that you can't do something
makes you wanna do it more.
[Aman] That's not a founder myth.
[Zubin] No, and it's a physicist
describing a pressure gradient.
[Aman] Yeah, now let's put the dates
against the child.
He's seven when the prices rise two
hundred and forty-five percent in a single
month, fourteen when Russia defaults in
August nineteen ninety-eight, and the and
and and six rubles to the dollar becomes
twenty within weeks.
The private banks fall over, depositors
queue for hours to be told that their
money is frozen.
[Zubin] And here's where you do the thing.
And I wonder on the record that I saw it
coming.
[Aman] What thing?
[Zubin] Well, the psychological leap,
right?
The dossier calls it the hypothesis, not a
finding.
A boy watches two currency collapses,
destroy his neighbor's savings, and 20
years later builds a bank that keeps
deposits completely out of the lending
system.
[Aman] And and I think the counter
evidence underneath it, you don't need the
childhood. You think about the derivatives
trader in 2013 could see a three to five
percent markup on retail FX and the price
of that arbitrage.
And and the tiny loan book wasn't just
philosophy at first, it was the law.
As an e-money institution, Revolut
couldn't lend customers deposits.
The man has told us himself what taught
him about risk, and it was in nineteen
ninety-eight. Then the education, because
it's the operating manual.
[Zubin] So Phystech from 2001, oral
examinations on unseen problems at a
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] 60 to 70 hours a week. Up to a
third of every intake goes within two
You derive everything from first
principles, rote learning is banned, and a
second master's at the New Economics
School at the same time.
[Aman] And you know, Zubin, it's still,
from what I from friends of ours who are
still his hiring rule. He and he told
Rubenstein he looks for three things: raw
brain power first, then character, and
then craft.
[Zubin] Which is which is the chalkboard
exam with the salary attached, right?
So
[Aman] Yeah. So so London then and for
once the dates come from him.
Lehman came to the university recruiting,
an internship in the summer of twenty six,
another in spring twenty seven, and then a
full time job in equity derivatives when
he graduated.
[Zubin] Yeah, twenty five Bank Street,
Canary Wharf.
Let's let's remember this address because
we'll come
[Aman] Yes.
[Zubin] back to this, right?
[Aman] Fifteenth of september two thousand
eight, the firm ceases to exist on a
morning. he has said the trading book
could be down hundred of millions of
dollars in a day. His verdict extremely
risky.
[Zubin] Hundreds of millions in a day.
That's what more than Monzo earns in the
whole last year, gone before lunch.
[Aman] On one desk.
[Zubin] Right, and and the Monday itself,
right?
And you know, we as we were prepping for
this, he he mentioned to Rubenstein, he
remembers exactly. the collapse was
announced on, I think, the Sunday night.
He came in anyway. One of those 200
traders on the floor, every system locked
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] down, nothing to trade. So what do
these guys do?
200 of them all play the same computer
game, shooting down helicopter.
Okay.
[Aman] Yeah. I'm not just gonna say
anything.
Then Credit Suisse, one Cabot Square, same
estate, until twenty thirteen.
A different problem, he says, not the
risk, the infighting.
He resigned the moment his British
passport came through, and Credit Suisse
as he points out, is also gone.
[Zubin] Well, two employers, two
extinctions, one lost a fortune because
and the other turned on itself, I guess.
[Aman] And one conclusion, and here it is,
in his own words What I really learned
experience, is that you shouldn't take a
risk in complex things.
Cut the psychology. his sentence beats my
hypothesis
[Zubin] Accepted and it's it's a design
rule, not a feeling, right?
So let's price what he built with it.
His number one loan to deposit, six
percent, which he volunteers himself,
right? A typical bank runs near a hundred
and he says he's never gone past ten to
twenty.
[Aman] The audited version is a bit more
stark, Zubin.
December twenty twenty five, one point
eight five billion pounds of loans against
fifty point two billion of customer money.
Three point seven percent.
Fifty billion is more than Monzo and
Starling hold together.
And that's against a loan book that is
smaller than Monzo.
[Zubin] You know, that's not a bank.
That's cautious about lending, right?
Like that's a bank that has decided
lending is somebody else's department.
[Aman] And and then the claim that
deserves a raised eyebrow.
Return on equity of forty to fifty percent
once excess capital is deducted.
Double his best rivals, his he says.
[Zubin] Contested and here's why, right?
Like net profit over equity audited, you
know, I think it's what 1.3 billion pounds
over 4.9 billion, but what, 26.7%?
Excellent, but not 45. And on the same
arithmetic, Nubank is about 28 and a half,
right? His he's double his
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] rival only after he redefines his
denominator.
[Aman] Yeah, as we all do. And there's
[Zubin] Yeah.
[Aman] a real mechanism under this
redefinition.
So let me defend it. A pound at a central
bank carries a risk weight of zero.
A personal loan, 75 to 100.
Over 60% of Revolut's assets are cash and
reserves.
So only about 22 pounds in every hundred
count against capital.
JP Morgan, for example, 43, Nubank, 55.
Which is why his core capital ratio is
thirty one percent and JP Morgan's is
fifteen.
[Zubin] But aman this case, except the
capital isn't all voluntary, right?
Like in June and emerged that the ECB had
raised the Lithuanian bank's Pillar 2
requirements to I think four and half
percent.
And the higher highest add-on of any bank
it directly supervises.
So some of the capital he calls excessive
is capital a supervisor told him to hold.
[Aman] Yeah, and and so it isn't return on
equity once excess capital is deducted,
the ECB's opinion of us is deducted.
and
[Zubin] Exactly, exactly.
[Aman] and and twenty six point seven is
still a very good bank.
So
[Zubin] Fair point.
[Aman] put him next to the bank we've been
arguing about since the episode fifteen.
If you remember the flywheel that we that
we established, the one that said that
every neo bank that makes it is running.
[Zubin] So let's play that back, right?
Like the wedge the monetization ladder and
the efficiency engine, right?
So win the customers for almost nothing
with one product that fixes a real pain,
climb them up that ladder of a sort of a
higher margin product, and then run it all
on a stack so effectively that every rung
stays
[Aman] And both of them run it.
Nubank's Wedge was the purple no fee card,
as you eloquently put it.
Revolut's was the multi-currency card at
the interbank rate.
both have the engine. Revolut's cost to
income ratio is under twenty-eight
percent.
[Zubin] But Raman, the difference in the
ladder, and I I don't think we said this
enough in episode fifteen, right?
The ladder goes to different places and
the scars decide where.
So Nubank climbed into credit, fifty-eight
percent of his deposits lend out.
net interest margin nine point eight
percent, eighty percent of its revenue is
interest.
[Aman] And revenue climbs into everything
except credit, subscriptions, FX, trading,
wealth, crypto, net interest margins two
point one.
Seventy-four percent of revenue is fees.
[Zubin] Right, and then a Nubank pays for
its ladder, right?
Cost of risk, five hundred and twenty
basis points against revolutes one hundred
fifty eight. Late stage bad bad loans six
point one percent against against
revolutes two point four.
[Aman] Yeah, same flywheel, opposite
ladders.
Vélez at Nubank turns deposits into credit
and prices the default.
Storonsky turns deposits into a float and
prices transactions.
The Lehman floor decided which ladder he
built.
[Zubin] Right. And and let's talk about
another a third ladder people forget
So SoFi started by refinancing student
loans, lends heavily, bought a bank
charter in 2022, and is also bought
Galileo and and Technesis, the plumbing,
and sells that plumbing to other banks and
fintechs.
SoFi's stop rung isn't a product for
customers, it's essentially the stack
itself sold to its competitors.
[Aman] Wh which is heresy in a bank?
Every bank I've known guards its core
systems like crown jewels.
[Zubin] Right, and so five rents the crown
jewels out by the account.
[Aman] Which is the real story of the neo
bank class of this decade?
The ones that made it aren't cheaper
banks.
Each has picked a different answer to a
question banks stopped asking about a
century ago. What is a deposit for?
[Zubin] Right and and Nubank says credit,
revolut says float, SoFi says software.
[Aman] And JP Morgan says all three on a
four trillion
[Zubin] Of course.
[Aman] dollar balance sheet, that which is
sort of why the incumbents aren't dead, I
suppose. And and we said that episode that
incumbents can run the flywheel to0 Chase
UK Trust Bank here in Singapore.
What they lack isn't the idea, it's the
nerve to cannibalize themselves.
Storonsky had nothing to cannibalize.
[Zubin] Yeah, no scar to choose from a
branch network, right?
His only scar is probably Lehman.
Well, let's watch Revolut run the wedge
somewhere new, aman right?
Because it shows how far he goes to avoid
the lending ladder.
Take Mexico, Jan 2026. The launch
[Aman] Yeah. Yeah.
[Zubin] offer is 15% a year on savings.
Which, you know, when you think about what
the central bank has cut maybe 12 times to
about seven.
[Aman] Eight points under water, Zubin, on
every peso he doesn't lend, and he isn't
lending.
[Zubin] Yeah. And it isn't an interest
rate, right?
It's a marketing budget.
And I think we've kind of mentioned this
before, right?
Internalist estimates report puts his
acquisition cost in Mexico, I think, under
twelve dollars an account, against more
than maybe about sixty-five for a branch
bank, right? So five hundred fifty
thousand accounts by August, on a what,
one sixty seven million dollars of
capital, and behind it the sixty-five
billion dollar remittance corridor from
the US.
[Aman] And and same move as the twenty
fifteen card.
Give away the spread to get the customer.
In eleven years, he has never once
acquired a customer by lending
[Zubin] Yeah, which is a flywheel adapting
to the market, right?
In London the wedge was a card, in Mexico
it is a deposit rates.
The first step changes, the refusal to
climb onto the credit rung doesn't.
[Aman] And the float has a weather
problem.
Analysts, rule of thumb, every hundred
basis points of rate cuts costs the
digital bank with a five percent loan book
fifteen to twenty-two percent of its float
revenue. Nubank is naturally hedged,
cheaper money means more credit demand and
fewer defaults. Revolut is the one who
dressed.
For one kind of weather.
[Zubin] Yeah. Interest is about a quarter
of his revenue, right?
Seventy four percent is fees.
[Aman] And look at the purest float and
fee business that's listed, Wise.
As rates eased this year, its growth slid
from over thirty percent to nineteen.
Same species, same cold.
[Zubin] Yeah, that then the honest
summary, right?
He removed credit risk and accepted rate
risk.
A choice, not a free lunch.
[Aman] He he'd he'd say it's cheaper risk.
[Zubin] And and he might be right for a
decade at a time, right?
Rates don't default
[Aman] And every risk we've named so far,
he's either removed or priced.
Not one of them is inside the building.
So let's go inside.
[Zubin] Yeah, let's go inside, right?
Fifteen thousand staff from hundred and
ten countries on his own count, and at the
top more than forty direct reports.
Confirmed, right? Including the three
people
[Aman] Yeah. Yeah.
[Zubin] whose job is it to tell him no.
Essentially the finance chief, the general
counsel, and the credit risk officer.
[Aman] Picture that diary, twenty minutes
each of a week is thirteen hours of one to
before he even opens a dashboard.
[Zubin] His his version is no layers,
nobody between him and the numbers.
The version from former executives, it's a
isn't as structured
[Aman] You know, we've been trained
classically in business school about span
and things, but before we judge it, put it
next to the most valuable chip maker in
the world. Jensen Huang runs NVIDIA with
around sixty reported direct reports and
[Zubin] I I I knew you would go there.
[Aman] And no one on ones at all.
I mean I would love to work for Jensen for
multiple reasons.
he says he can't, so so he puts a problem
in front of all of them and and then they
all attack it together.
[Zubin] So forty isn't crazy, it's two
thirds of Jensen.
[Aman] Which is the real question, is this
the new way of running a company, Zubin?
where dashboards and AI replace the middle
layer if you'd like, and the chief
executive talks to everybody all at once?
Or is it that span of control that works
right up until it doesn't?
[Zubin] Yeah, and and Jensen's version,
just to kind of get us on the same page
who've followed along, because everyone
hears the same thing at the same time.
Stronosky's runs through one chair on a
Monday, same span, different wiring.
[Aman] the stakes are very different.
you know, in a chip company a red cell is
a delay.
In a bank, a red cell could be a
regulatory incident, a detailed Monday
weekly business review, and you know,
endless you know, meetings and and and
debate.
[Zubin] It's it's Phystech chalkboard run
weekly on the whole company.
[Aman] And you know, I'll defend Storonsky
because every bank I've worked in have had
those meetings I just talked about.
The difference is that we found the red
cell six weeks after the quarter end in a
deck that took a fortnight to build and
nobody remembered who owned it.
You know that, you've worked in a bank.
[Zubin] I I r I I remember those days,
yes, yes.
[Aman] He's compressed all of that quarter
into a week and and the deck into a
that's not cruelty, that's that's low
latency.
[Zubin] Latency for the number, right?
What's the latency for the person who owns
that number?
[Aman] Which is, I guess, where the Karma
comes in.
[Zubin] Yeah, like so let's talk about
Karma, built in 2020 in the annual report,
across more than 30 compliance workflows
of for a late policy, a delayed suspicious
activity report, a missing customer
document.
The scores roll up to the departments and
become a multiplier on the team's bonus.
So compliance
[Aman] You yeah.
[Zubin] isn't a memo, it's priced into
your colleagues' pay.
[Aman] You know, I saw this internal data,
there was a report, I didn't see the
data, I go saw the report on it that said
that the adherence rose twenty five
percent.
[Zubin] That's pretty wild, right?
Like it measures whether the report was
filed on time, not whether it was right.
a bank that has to gamify caution has told
you its default setting.
[Aman] Or it's told you something about
every bank and this is the one
[Zubin] Yeah.
[Aman] indelicate enough to staple it to
the bonus point.
[Zubin] Ha ha ha ha.
[Aman] And I'll add what I hear firsthand
because as I said, I have friends who work
exhilarating, brilliant people with an
absolutely ruthless mindset.
For your first few years, you're literally
only as good as your last month.
And after that, it's your last quarter.
[Zubin] Man, that sounds exhausting,
[Aman] Yeah. Very different from Google
that we grew up in.
[Zubin] Whoop!
[Aman] but the cadence at which they
deliver is an order of magnitude faster
And that's the real competitive advantage.
As long as they don't screw it up.
[Zubin] let's park that caveat because you
we'll need it for that for the breach.
[Aman] Yeah. and so let's talk about
hiring then.
I think is the purest part of his machine.
In the earlier years, he personally
interviewed every engineering and product
hire. It was like a massive quantified
live problem solving exercise.
[Zubin] Yeah, and and right, calculate
interchange across fragmented corridors,
database schema to cut latency on a
whiteboard now falter and you're out
within minutes in the room.
[Aman] Yeah. I mean you can imagine a
physics major kind of like, you know,
probably the same, right?
[Zubin] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, a and
and the defenders aren't paid to defend,
Alan Chan, employee number five, compares
it to an Olympic training camp, right?
The hundred and fifty billion secondary
made hundreds of employees millionaires in
London, in Krakow, in vilnius
[Aman] Hundreds of millionaires in crack
out, that's a class mobility story, which
don't think many companies could ever
tell.
[Zubin] Yeah, and and the number isn't
anonymous, right?
Between 2017 and 2024, five chief risk
officers and four
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] chief compliance officers,
averaging under 18 months each, during the
were reviewing the license, right?
The the reported reason, a protein that
lost an argument with compliance could
take it straight to the chief executive.
[Aman] And the org chart that removes
bureaucracy also removes the one layer
slow it down.
[Zubin] Right, and here's the half of the
machine critics skip, and it's the half I
work life in, right? It ships, it scales
at the speed banks don't.
So a speed round, let's talk about it,
right?
Customers, 20 million when it launched its
checkout in 2020 55 million by mid 2025 80
million now, plus 800,000 businesses.
[Aman] Four times the customers in four
years.
And and let's talk about transactions, 590
million in a month at the end of 2023 940
million just a year later.
The UK, nine million customers by mid 2034
thirteen million this spring.
[Zubin] Right, and licenses a full UK bank
in in March, France in August, conditional
approval for the American bank this month,
and Israel reported in its final stages,
Most banks would take decades to collect
that set.
[Aman] You know, and and I think the the
importance of that numbers section of ours
is it's not a growth curve, it's just a
different clock speed.
In most banks that we've known, a new
product spends longer in committee than
Revolut spends launching a country.
[Zubin] Let's talk about the products,
right?
Check out first Revolut One Click
Biometrics, one card number typed in,
launched in 2022 for British and European
merchants, now live in the UK, Europe,
Singapore and Australia.
[Aman] You know, it's a bit o it's like an
odd thing for a bank to build.
Banks issue the card, they don't design
the checkout, right?
What's up with that?
[Zubin] But I guess that's that's the
point, right?
Like he owns the account, the card, the
acquiring, and now the button.
Every layer where a fee usually leaks to
somebody else.
[Aman] zubin given you're the payments
guru, why don't you explain to people who
in checkout flows?
[Zubin] Right, like in in simple terms,
right?
Like when you pay Revolut Pay for your
from your revolut balance, the money moves
inside revolut's own books.
There's no card scheme in the middle,
taking a card, no issuer, and acquire
splitting the splitting the fees.
The merchant pays revolut to and revolut
keeps a lot.
and and here's the clever part nobody
talks about.
Merchants can run promotions inside the
Revolut app to those 80 million customers
and Pay only when a sale happens.
This isn't a payment method.
It's almost I would argue an advertising
network with a checkout attached.
[Aman] Which is the lesson every big
platform eventually learns, right?
The checkout is where the advertising
money is.
then he did something no Neo Bank is
supposed to do.
He built ATMs.
[Zubin] It's just wild, right? Like was it
what June 2025, Spain announced on the
and the first machines were live at a
Barcelona music festival that same week.
50 in Madrid and Barcelona, up to 200
planned.
A two-third inch touch screen, free
withdrawals for customers, FX at the app's
rate, and it prints you a physical card on
the spot.
There's one in Milan Airport doing the
same.
[Aman] in one of the most cash heavy
economies in Europe, cash is over sixty
point of sale payments there, according to
the Bank of Spain.
[Zubin] Yeah, yeah yeah and and and this
spring he announced his first physical
Barcelona. but no means a traditional bank
branch.
The company says and and and plans for a
private bank reported at about what five
hundred thousand pounds minimum.
[Aman] So I think the branchless bank is
quite clever.
It's about building branches and a private
bank.
It's not a
[Zubin] Probably yeah.
[Aman] contradiction. I think it's part of
that ladder.
You don't sell wealth management to
somebody who has never seen you.
every bank I've worked with treated the
branch as a cost to shrink.
He's building one like a billboard.
[Zubin] Yeah, someone talked to me.
Why private banking of all things?
[Aman] Because the old private banks have
been walking away from the middle.
coutts by reporting now wants three
million pounds before it takes you on.
Revolut is at half a million.
aiming straight at the gap the incumbents
have left.
the same way he aimed at the FX spread, if
I I think about it in 2015.
[Zubin] And my favorite isn't a consumer
product at all, right?
The they couldn't find HR software that
ran performance management the way they
wanted. So they built their own.
It has put about what two million
candidates and ten thousand employees in
sixty countries through it before.
in 2023 it started selling it to other
companies.
Revolut people. The HR department became a
product line.
[Aman] You know, I want a T shirt, with
that on
[Zubin] Ha ha ha.
[Aman] it. Most banks I know can't get the
HR systems to talk to their payroll.
This one sells its own HR system.
[Zubin] Well well we don't know whether it
makes money.
They haven't disclosed that.
But the instinct is the tell, right?
Like when the market doesn't sell what you
need, you build it and then you sell it to
the market.
[Aman] And and it's that engineering
mindset.
So let let's hold that instinct because a
New York banker had exactly that same one
in 1977 and we'll get to him in a few
minutes.
[Zubin] Right. Then the product I think
that matters the most this year, and it
card or it's a machine, it's AIR, AI by
Revolut, right?
Rolled out to thirteen million UK
customers from the ninth of April.
You swipe down the home screen and talk to
your bank.
Freeze a card, cancel a subscription,
check the portfolio, budget a trip, or buy
a data plan for it.
[Aman] You know, I think this is really
exciting.
I every bank says it has a chat bot.
[Zubin] Right. The chatbot sends you to a
help page.
This one acts, right? The security line is
careful.
It only sees what you can already see in
the app.
And the revolut app says its AI's partners
keep none of that data and I guess don't
train on it, right?
[Aman] Yeah, I I think it's easy to be
skeptical.
Starling launched what it called was the
UK's first agentic assistant three weeks
later. natwest has one. Revolut wasn't
first, but it's interesting where they go
with the air or AIR.
[Zubin] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, aman it it
doesn't need to be, right?
And is this is only as useful as a number
of things it can do for you, Starling can
talk about your current account.
Revolut's can talk about your account,
your shares, your crypto, your travel,
your phone plan, and your subscriptions.
[Aman] I think this is super powerful and
completely underrated.
So 11 years of the super app looked very
cluttered.
And then AI, I was just listening to Dream
Force, where Benioff was talking about how
they had so many different features.
and AI is outing those features.
So similarly, I think what's happening
here is that when you have a super app
which looks very cluttered.
AI turns that clutter, if you'd like, into
a moat for Revolut, potentially.
[Zubin] Yeah. That's true, right?
That's the non-obvious bit.
The breadth has made the app confusing.
It's exactly what makes the assistant
useful.
[Aman] And once you talk to your bank, the
app redesigns stop being the battleground
the menu goes away, the product shelf is
what is left
[Zubin] That's right, which is the
challenge to the laggers, the trad's the
right? Like we can't prompt engineers your
way to build a product you haven't.
[Aman] And one caution, because it's the
theme of the hour.
Version one mostly answers questions and
does simple things.
The day it moves money on its own, so does
the risk move with it.
[Zubin] Right, and and and the one thing
it can't do yet is tell a real policeman
fake one. And so in in 2023, he pointed
the same machine at Capital.
QuantumLight with Ilya Kondrashoff.
I think I got that right.
An algorithm
[Aman] Good job.
[Zubin] called Aleph reads companies'
performance signals instead of taking
there was a scientific approach rather
than a human judgment.
[Aman] Lending, hiring, investing.
He's taken the human judgment out of all
of those three.
[Zubin] Yeah, and the question the
researchers couldn't answer, right?
Right Revolut sees eighty million people
spending.
Aleph reads performance signals.
Nothing public describes the wall between
the two.
And I'm not saying the data flows, right?
So I can't really say. I'm saying nobody
outside can tell you why it doesn't.
and AI runs is deeper than AIR, Revenue
says it uses it for sport, financial crime
and cross selling. So the function where
compliance chiefs keep leaving is now run
in part by the thing that doesn't leave.
[Aman] And that's not criticism, it's the
logic completing
[Zubin] That's right.
[Aman] itself. If if if the humans are the
most complex thing in the building, the
are what you automate
[Zubin] Which leaves one thing, right?
Risk doesn't vanish. It it conserves.
and if it's gone from the balance sheet,
the hiring flow and the investment
community, where did it go?
[Aman] Well to answer that Zubin I'll have
to take you back to Canary Wharf.
A few months ago I was standing there with
a coffee, looking up at the old Reuters
block, and the one with the news ticker
wrapped around it, it has now got the
Revolut name on it.
[Zubin] London. I walked it past it last
week and the thing that strikes you is
looks at it as a startup block anymore.
[Aman] Exactly. And and looking around
that plaza, you'll you'll see the whole
cycle. it's quite poetic.
A few minutes a walk away is the HSBC
Tower where, you know, I used to live, and
take meetings and which HSBC is planning
to leave when the lease runs out.
And then behind me, twenty five Bank
Street, you mentioned it, Lehman's.
[Zubin] Funny thing, I was with the Visa
folks.
They move into Canary Wharf to be closer
to the banks.
So maybe there's something there.
[Aman] Yeah, they should they should check
their email.
[Zubin] But well, that's a lot of
financial history for one flat white my
[Aman] It's a very large flat right zubin
but look, it drove home what Revolut is
actually attempting. This isn't new.
It's the oldest ambition in banking.
To be everywhere.
[Zubin] Yeah, like I mean Standard
Chartered, HSBC you and I worked in
[Aman] A century and a half ago, the
Chartered Bank got its Royal Charter in
follow trade to India and China.
HSBC was founded in Hong Kong in 1865, if
I'm not mistaken, for the China coast
trade. You know, having worked for both of
those institutions, I can tell you they
they grew up by following physical ships.
[Zubin] Yeah, and whereas Citi went after
the customer.
[Aman] Citi is the one I want to drive
home because it did it differently, you
Walter Wriston took the bank global from
1967 but the man who really made it the
global consumer bank we know it as was
John Reed.
And Reed grew it with technology, not
trade.
[Zubin] This is your New York banker from
[Aman] Go on, you earned it.
[Zubin] Right, so Reed takes over
Citibank's consumer business in the
24 hour machines that customers will
actually trust.
Now This is nineteen seventy seven.
Nobody sells one that is good enough.
So what does he do? City builds its own
hardware, writes its own software, and in
nineteen seventy seven, the first one goes
live at a branch in Queens.
[Aman] built their own because the market
didn't sell what they needed.
Sounds familiar.
[Zubin] Yeah, which is I guess Revolut
People.
It's the Spanish ATM, the same instinct
forty eight years apart.
[Aman] 200 million dollars on those
machines and the network behind them.
And when he was asked whether shareholders
objected, he said they had no real voice
in those days.
[Zubin] Which is revolut for the last
eleven years.
Private, no quarterly calls, a founder who
can put ATMs in Madrid because nobody gets
to vote
[Aman] And keep that thought, it comes
back at the end.
Now, Reed had a phrase for the rest of it:
success transfer.
Build an idea in one country and then ship
it to the next.
ATMs, cards, and then Citi Gold, a wealth
offer for affluent customers that started
in Asia and was exported across the
network.
Citi's private banking rung forty odd
years before Revolut's.
[Zubin] So card, app, ATM, private bank,
ship it to the next country.
That's the revolut roadmap with I guess a
90s, 80 haircut.
And the slogan comes with it, right?
Citi never sleeps, 24-hour
[Aman] Beautiful.
[Zubin] bank, banking as a brand, decades
before anyone said it was with an app.
[Aman] You know, Storonsky's doing it in
plain sight.
The Spanish ATM came with a stated plan to
take them to Germany, Italy, Portugal
next. That's success transfer in a press
release.
Now, let's look at the heirs of the three
banks are doing today.
April 2021 one city announces it's leaving
consumer banking in thirteen markets,
fourteen with Mexico. Jane Fraser's
reason.
They don't have the scale to compete.
And the line of hers, I love this, I'd put
it on a t-shirt, the second t-shirt,
nostalgia is not a strategy.
[Zubin] Which is the one thing that she
and Storonsky would violently agree on, I
guess.
[Aman] Violently. Two people reading the
same two hundred years and refusing to be
sentimental about it. She closes thirteen
markets, he opens forty, same refusal,
opposite strategy.
[Zubin] HSBC sold its French retail bank,
you know, completed on the first of
2024 four at a loss of what up to two
billion euros, sold Canada to RBC, pulled
out of the mass market retail in America,
right?
So yeah.
[Aman] yeah, and and Standard Chartered in
twenty twenty two announced a full exit
seven markets across Africa in the Middle
East, Angola to Zimbabwe, which together
made about one percent of the group's
income, then put retail Botswana, Uganda
and Zambia all up for sale.
[Zubin] So the three banks that invented
global retail banking are closing
company in its old Reuters building is
opening them.
[Aman] Forty countries live, a hundred as
the target, hundred.
New licenses this year in Britain, in
France, under the ECB, a full bank in
Mexico, and this month conditional
approval for a national charter in
America.
[Zubin] And for scale, right, Nubank, the
the Nubank that we both admire most, runs
three countries. Nobody in this class is
attempting attempting what he has right?
Like not Nubank, not SoFi, not Chime.
[Aman] We called this focus versus breath
in Nubank's the mini so that we did.
New bank mastered Brazil before it even
touched Mexico.
Revolut went to forty markets on one app
alone.
[Zubin] What's changed since is the
licenses, right?
Like the UK bank,
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] a French bank under ECB, a Mexico
bank, and an American one on its way,
So breadth with charter is a different
animal.
[Aman] So there's an uncomfortable
question.
[Zubin] Why would the same economics push
three giants out and pull one upstart in,
guess?
[Aman] If I answer it myself, because the
retreat and the advance are, if you'd
same spreadsheet, read from opposite ends.
For an incumbent, every country is a
branch network, a legacy core, and a
compliance team, all paid for locally.
If the country is 1% of the income, the
spreadsheet says leave.
For Revolut, a new country is a new
license, but also a compliance and a
translation on all on one global stack.
The marginal country is incredibly cheap,
Zupit.
[Zubin] Yeah, except the part that isn't
cheap is the part the incumbents are
fleeing, right? It isn't the branches,
it's the compliance.
And compliance doesn't get cheaper on a
better stack.
he admits it himself with political
tension, right?
Especially sanctions. You can't do a lot
of things in many, many, many, many
countries.
[Aman] Yeah, and that's the unpaid bill
that he knows about.
[Zubin] and the there's a second
difference from HSBC and Standard
Their network was ports.
Physical places where ships tied up.
Shanghai, Bombay, Singapore, and a branch
on the quay side to finance whatever came
off the boat.
[Aman] And Revolut's Network is platforms,
no quay side, no ships, one stack, and a
customer anywhere you can reach it.
[Zubin] Right, they banked ports, he banks
a platform.
And that changes who you're for, right?
A port banks follows cargo, trade,
finance, corporate clients, high margin.
A platform follows people, travelers,
expats, a money a builder in Texas sends
home to Cuba. I'm gonna say to Cuba.
Okay.
[Aman] say yeah.
[Zubin] a platform follows people,
travelers, expats, a money a builder in
home to Mexico. That corridor alone is $65
billion a year.
[Aman] Thinner margins, a vastly bigger
crowd.
And that decides the retreat.
When the numbers turn you and that decides
the retreat.
When the numbers turn, you can close a
port.
You can't really close a platform.
[Zubin] Which is why they could leave and
I guess he can't.
[Aman] Which is why the American Charter
matters so much and why it may just be a
[Zubin] Right, let's let's go back to
Durbin.
And that's one's my department.
I'm gonna take this, right?
US debit exchange for big banks is capped
at around what 22 cents a swipe.
Banks under $10 billion of assets under
management are exempt and can earn well
over a dollar on a hundred dollar
purchase, right?
So Revolut rise that exemption today
through a partner bank.
Win your own charter cross 10 billion and
up to 70% of that.
Income goes.
[Aman] So the license he's chasing may
cost him the income it was supposed to
[Zubin] Yeah, and and Europe says he'll
survive it.
Interchange there has been capped at what
twenty, thirty basis points for years, and
he built this anyway.
[Aman] Then a prediction, I suppose,
because we should put our money where our
Citi's ATM's lead didn't last.
the competitors took years to catch up,
but they did catch up.
Reed's global consumer bank lasted,
though, for 40 years before his successes
began selling it. The stack advantage is
real, but the compliance is where it gets
tested. So before Revolut reaches 100
countries, it will pull out, I think, of
at least a couple.
[Zubin] Yeah, and now take the other side,
right?
Every red cell he's ever met, he's tried
to engineer away.
A country is just a very large red cell,
he'll fix it before he leaves it.
[Aman] in the log we check in three years.
[Zubin] Yeah, and if I win, you're buying
the flat whites, man.
Oat milk, oat milk.
[Aman] Yeah. canary wharf large one.
[Zubin] win, he'll call it a relaunch.
[Aman] And notice what the bet really is,
Zubin.
It's a bet on one man's patience with a
red cell, which actually neatly brings us
to what that patience is worth to him.
[Zubin] $33 billion, his reported stake,
right?
28.7% of a 150 billion, right?
Make it physical. 33 billion is what the
whole of Revolut was worth at its what
2021 fund round. Five years ago, that
number was the company.
Today it's his slice.
[Aman] And it's growing faster than most
companies do.
75 billion late last year, 115 billion in
July, 40 billion in under a year.
Now, now let's put a banker next to him.
Jamie Dimon 20 years running the biggest
bank, arguably the most successful bank in
America. And by the estimates we're
working worth around 3.1 billion.
Not bad. But Storonsky is ten Dimon's And
at two hundred billion, where his stake
reportedly rises to forty percent, 24
Dimon's
[Zubin] That's a good line. That's the
wrong point, Dimon's fortune is
pay, stock awards to an employee set by a
board and voted on by shareholders.
It's cap in the low millions.
Storonsky's fortune is ownership.
He hasn't paid it, he kept it, right?
So banking as a career caps you, banking
as a founder, I guess, does not.
[Aman] You're right, I got carried away.
It's a good line, but it's
[Zubin] Ha ha ha.
[Aman] the wrong line. Strike the ratio,
keep the instrument.
[Zubin] And the instrument tells you that
what each man does next, right?
Dimon by the accounts we have has begun
selling JPMC stock.
Storonsky by the accounts went the other
way.
[Aman] This is Project Shasta, and I'll
say what the dossier reports and no more.
In August, shareholders voted on amended
articles.
Per press reports, the ceiling on
borrowing against Revolut shares rises
from $50 million to $250.
And the 10% cap goes, and so does the
independent board veto.
[Zubin] And we owe him the other side,
right?
Revolut calls it administrative
housekeeping.
Another reading says it was an employer
liquidity program, not a founder margin
facility. So we don't know which is right.
And and nobody has published the loan to
value limits or the margin call triggers,
right? Open questions, not a story.
[Aman] But if the reporting is right, it's
the rule running backwards.
He won't let the bank lend more than a
fifth of its deposits, but he'd borrow
against his own company with the veto
gone.
[Zubin] Sure, sure, sure. If the reporting
is right.
So let's let's move on. Yeah.
[Aman] Yeah. Then there's the comparison
I'd rather make, and it's about
not about money, zubin If anyone in the
story is the next Jamie Dimon, it's David
Vélez, a lender, Price's default for a
living, builds that fortress one country
at a time. Storonsky isn't the next Dimon
[Zubin] Next Elon.
[Aman] He's the next Elon. And not because
of the speed and
[Zubin] Yeah.
[Aman] the scale. Plenty of founders have
those.
Because of the transformation.
Musk didn't build a cheaper car.
He changed what a car company is.
Storonsky isn't building a cheaper bank.
He's trying to change what a bank is for.
[Zubin] And he'll take that compliment,
right?
Like the FT's
[Aman] No, you shouldn't.
[Zubin] Patrick Jenkins wrote this month
that Europe may finally be buying his
be the closest thing the continent has to
a Bezos or a Musk, right?
[Aman] Then let's count the parallels
because there are more than what people
[Zubin] Yeah, like first principles, Musk
famously priced a rocket for its raw
for what the industry charged.
Storovsky's was trained in FinTech to
derive everything and memorize nothing.
[Aman] The culture in 2019, after an
investigation into the hours, he told his
staff, Revolut is not a lifestyle
business.
in November 2022, Musk told Twitter staff
they'd need to be extremely hardcore, long
hours, high intensity.
[Zubin] Right. Same email three years
apart, I guess different letterheads.
[Aman] Yeah, the org chart is flat,
engineering led, as we talked about, and
inside every product decision.
[Zubin] Yeah, the the side projects,
right?
Musk has rockets, tunnels, brain implants,
Storonsky has venture fund run by an
algorithm and a stated interest in help
tech.
[Aman] And then there's the pay.
Last November Tesla's shareholders
approved a package worth Up to $8 trillion
in 12 tranches. If Tesla reaches, of
course, $8.5 trillion in market value.
Revolut's board, as reported, has been
modeling Storonsky's next package on Musks
and on Rene Haas at arm, on top of the 40%
at $200 billion, a further award if
Revolut holds $500.
[Zubin] You know, and I'll defend it the
way Tesla's board did, right?
a hurdle that high costs stakeholders
nothing unless it's cleared.
And if it's cleared, then they're all four
times richer, right?
It's the cheapest option a board can
write.
[Aman] Unless it changes how he drives, a
500 billion target rewards exactly the
expansion we just spent ten minutes on.
The package and the empire are essentially
the same bet.
[Zubin] And here's the parallel that
almost is too neat, right?
In 1999, Musk tried to build exactly this.
X.com, one app for all your money.
And his co-founders pushed him out while
he was flying to his honeymoon.
And the company became PayPal, right?
We've talked about this in our PayPal
episodes, but a bunch of other times as
well.
[Aman] Yeah. So Musk tried to build the
Everything Bank and got fired from it and
went off to build cars and rockets.
Storonsky is building the Everything Bank.
[Zubin] And and I guess but here's where
the comparison breaks, right?
Which is the interesting bit.
Musk bet the companies on physics, rockets
that might blow up on the pad.
Storonsky refuses to bet his on credit.
[Aman] One takes the risk everyone can
see, the other removes it, and both keep
that left them in place
[Zubin] keep keep that line for the end.
Now let's prosecute him.
[Aman] The case against in full, you
defend.
[Zubin] All right, all right, all right,
gladly.
He's easier to defend than you think and
harder to defend than he thinks.
[Aman] Let's start with his own words.
Storonsky had said Citigroup and the big
banks grew by buying other banks and ended
up with systems that don't talk to each
other.
And the irony is hard to miss because if
one bank has been exposed for weak
controls during breakneck expansion, it's
been revolut
[Zubin] Yeah, and the defence stipulates
the irony, right?
Like systems that don't talk to each other
is a Citi problem.
Controls that can't be kept up is a
revenue problem, right?
Different disease and his is maybe
curable.
[Aman] Count one, fines and freeze.
An anti-money laundering fine last year
from the Lithuanian regulator, as we
understand it, eleven and a half million
euros from the Italian Competition
Authority in April for misleading
marketing of crypto and investment
products. Two rungs of this ladder and and
one nobody saw.
In july 2025 the ECB and the Bank of
Lithuania confidentially barred.
New retail products across Europe until an
independent review was done.
Nobody outside knew for nearly a year.
[Zubin] And and you know, aman in those
same six months a full UK license, a
license, and this month a conditional yes
for American regulators.
You don't get three yeses in six months
from supervisors who think you're out of
control.
[Aman] Yeah, you get the yeses with the
highest capital add The ECB said yes and
charged him for having said no in secret.
[Zubin] That's a regulator saying, We're
watching, not stop.
Whether that freeze has been lifted,
nobody has said publicly.
I guess an open question.
[Aman] So let's go to count number two.
And it's this month. between 11th and 13th
of September, someone used a genuine
Italian government email domain to send
revolut emergency data requests.
The channel built for imminent threats so
a compliance officer can answer the police
in minutes. Nobody called Rome.
[Zubin] Out went full KYC files on about
what 680 to 700 wealthy and crypto
passports, driver's license, bank
statements, verified selfies, your own
face holding your own password.
And then Telegram, screenshots, $3 million
ransom demand and at 10,000 Bitcoin claim
nobody has verified.
[Aman] The ICO and CNIL opened inquiries
on the fourteenth, and within days he was
interviews in Paris in the suit that we
just described, describing a model with
effectively zero risk.
[Zubin] Which is the sentence I'll defend
because it's been misread all week.
Zero risk was always a credit claim.
6% lent out, 60% in cash.
It was never an operational claim.
And the software held. Someone followed a
procedure from a real government address.
That's the manual layer, the one he said
he was automating.
[Aman] And he didn't cancel.
[Zubin] Right, he didn't cancel, right?
He didn't send a spokesman.
He walked up the stairs, past the broken
lift, and took the questions.
[Aman] Seven hundred people's faces on
Telegram holding their own passports.
a bank that took risks out of its balance
sheet, its hiring and its investing routed
what was left through a compliance
officer's inbox.
[Zubin] And the fix is most Storonsky not
less, right?
Automate the callback, make the machine
ring rome before a human can hit send.
And in fairness to him, Revolut says it
checked with the agencies itself, blocked
the address, told the regulator, and that
its systems and the customers' funds were
untouched. The FCA says it's engaging
with.
[Aman] and I'd still call it the story of
the month because it's the second time in
years. September 2022 about 50,000
customers, details were taken by social
engineering, September 2026 a fake
government request.
Different doors, same wall.
A person persuaded to hand over something
over.
[Zubin] Yeah, so two breaches through you
know, I guess both through people, neither
code. And your friend's caveat just came
true, right?
An order of magnitude faster than banking.
So as long as they don't screw it up, I
guess.
[Aman] The suit says grown up, the breech
says there's plenty of growing up still to
[Zubin] 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.
[Aman] You know, and and Zubin, there's a
postscript to this and it's breaking as we
record this. 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.
[Zubin] And and and and he'll say it
correctly, this is was a really revolut,
It was a partner on historical records
from before he changed the trading.
[Aman] Ya's correct. But it won't matter.
The more
[Zubin] Probably.
[Aman] regulated you are, and as he
realizes, the less anyone cares whose
A bank owns its supply chain.
that's what a license I guess means.
[Zubin] 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.
[Aman] You know, it it reminds me, years
ago I was at a banker's lunch at the Hong
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.
[Zubin] Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Didn't Mario Andretti say that?
[Aman] This is this is also true, but you
know, being profound is forgetting your
I suppose.
[Zubin] All right, all right, okay, okay.
I'll I'll leave it with you.
One of you said it, it's still the right
[Aman] 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 and he pleads to this himself because
it's the empire from two segments ago.
A consumer bank. in more than a hundred
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.
[Zubin] And over compliance also gets
punished too, right?
Like November 2025 confirmed revenue 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.
[Aman] And and the man at the top has his
own Russian paperwork story.
Nine days. 19th of October 2022, Ukraine
designates his father under Presidential
Decree 726 for running Gazprom Prom Gaz.
28th of October, the son renounces his
Russian citizenship.
British since 2013 From that day, British
only.
[Zubin] Yeah, a physicist born in Lviv,
sanctioned by the country of his birth for
engineering firm in the country he moved
to, and nine days later his son gives up
the other passport.
[Aman] 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
[Zubin] Yeah, and the defense through a
five-year UK application, parliamentary
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.
[Aman] And the file never closes.
He built a bank that vets everyone, and
he's the one customer it will never finish
vetting.
[Zubin] I guess prosecution rests.
So
[Aman] Prosecution rests, a freeze nobody
knew about, two breaches in a month,
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.
[Zubin] Yeah, and and the reporting says a
float within two years at up to 200
right? He told Rubenstein in April it was
two years away.
And the duel isting isn't a whisper.
He's confirmed London and New York.
for a man who spends two years calling a
London float irrational.
[Aman] the only precedent. Wise moved its
primary listing to the Nasdaq in May and
multiple stayed tied to the fundamentals,
about four and a half times revenue.
Revolut's private mark is nineteen.
On Wise's multiple, Revolut is a 27
billion dollar company.
[Zubin] 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 million 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.
[Aman] And the reader wants what he never
had to give, quarterly numbers and a board
teeth. Remember Reed? Shareholders had no
real voice when he built Citi's consumer
bank. Storonsky has built his with none at
all.
[Zubin] And and the listening is when they
get their voice, right?
[Aman] Yeah, public markets don't remove
founder control, they price it every
[Zubin] 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.
[Aman] 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
[Zubin] Which takes us straight back to
the ladder, right?
So four and five is the wedge working.
Primacy, 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.
[Aman] So the scar that kept him off the
landing rung may be what keeps him off the
rung.
[Zubin] and a fifteen percent teaser can't
buy it privacy, right?
So think Mexico buys you an account, not
the salary.
So either he builds a different drop
round, the private bank, wealth, the ATM,
the store, the places where people keep
money rather than own it, or he climbs
into credit after all.
[Aman] And that's the decision the
listing, I suppose, will force.
[Zubin] Yeah. Then then one prediction
each.
So you can hold us to them, I guess,
right?
Mine, 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
ten billion. I guess the scar meets the
spreadsheet and America, I guess the
spreadsheet wins.
[Aman] Interesting. Mine before the
listing the forty directs will become
twenty. Not because he changes his mind,
but because the prospectus has a
governance section and somebody at the
underwriters will read it.
[Zubin] All right, both in the log along
with the flat whites, we have that all
[Aman] Which takes me back to the coffee
in Canary Wharf.
Three buildings in one view.
The bank that died, the bank that's
leaving, and the bank that's arriving.
And to the question I asked in the first
minute, has he built anything that works
when he's not in the room?
[Zubin] Hmm for the French license was
argued at the ACPR.
by Frédéric Oudéa I hope I got that right.
Mexico was launched by Juan Miguel
Guerra's I always get the hard names, I
guess. so
[Aman] Yeah.
[Zubin] QuantumLight is Kondrashov's.
Martin Gilbert's board carried the PRA
application, three clean audits since the
disputes. Pieces of the bank with other
people's names on them.
The machines run without him, cards, FX,
checkout, ATMs, licenses.
What hasn't left the building is the
judgment.
So every decision about a person, a risk
officer, a launch still routes through his
room.
[Aman] Which is the one risk he did not
remove.
He took it off the balance sheet off the
hiring floor out of the investment
committee, and he kept all of it in one
place himself.
Wriston and Reed built a global bank that
outlived both of them.
Storonsky is building the same empire on a
better stack.
And he hasn't yet built the part that
outlives him.
the man who learned at two dead banks not
to take risk in complex things has become
the most complex thing in his own bank.
[Zubin] And he chose the building site.
All right, so tell us where we got him
wrong.
And the pinned comments is a real
question, So subscribe if the long form
earns its keep and send this to the one
person in your bank who still thinks a
loan to deposit ratio of six is a typo.
[Aman] Stay curious.
[Zubin] And I guess stay purposeful.
[Aman] One last thing. At the end of the
Paris interview, Storonsky was asked what
does to switch off. Kitesurfing, he said,
And then it's like meditation.
The wind, the sea, you go with them
without actually thinking.
The man who took thinking out of lending,
out of hiring, out of investing, and the
one place he's happiest is the place he
can't control a single variable.
[Zubin] Out on the water the wind doesn't
file a suspicious activity report.
[Aman] No, and it doesn't wear a suit
either.
[Zubin] I guess. I guess.