Revolut Goes Bricks-and-Mortar: Barcelona Signals Decoded
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
As FinTechs stack bricks atop bits to forge trust, Revolut plants its digital-first flag in the physical world.
The London-headquartered company confirmed to Euronews that it plans to open its first permanent physical store in Barcelona.
Revolut said the store is intended to engage directly with consumers and make financial technology more accessible to the public, and they had not revealed the exact location of the store, nor the precise services it intends to provide on-site.
The company said it would "by no means be a traditional bank branch," but instead a "high-visibility, immersive space".
If you've passed through Barcelona's airport lately, you've likely spotted Revolut's card-printing kiosks already humming there, a quiet nod to their existing physical footprint.
This new storefront amps that up.
Revolut's not alone. Starling and Monzo have toyed with pop-ups, but a flagship store screams ambition.
Is this the start of a high-street revival for digital natives? Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.
See what else is happening in FinTech today. 👇See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
#FINTECHREPORT
📈 The FinTech industry now generates nearly $𝟲𝟱𝟬 𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗢𝗡 in total revenue 🤯
INSIGHTS
➡️ Powering Sovereign Payroll; Jupiter's DeFi infrastructure meets the world's workforce by Noah. Noah has built an end-to-end stablecoin payments system using Solana for fast, low-cost settlement, combined with fiat rails for global collections and payouts. By integrating with Jupiter, the solution enables users to instantly access swaps, yield, and off-ramps, creating a compliant, scalable model for payroll, remittances, and cross-border payments.
➡️ How to Start a Payment Processing Company in 2026 by DashDevs. Written by Igor Tomych of DashDevs, the guide outlines how to start a payment processing company in 2026, emphasizing the importance of choosing the right model (such as gateway, PSP, or PayFac), understanding compliance and partnerships, and focusing on a specific use case or market before scaling.
FINTECH NEWS
🇬🇧 Smart money app Plum reaches profitability. Plum has reported strong financial growth of 60%+ year on year, along with making £34m in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The app has multiple income streams spanning customer subscriptions, asset-based revenue, and transaction revenue, which have together contributed to the company achieving the milestone.
🇵🇱 XTB launches in-app caller verification as vishing attacks surge across retail trading. Customers using the XTB app can now request a real-time push notification to verify whether an inbound call is from an XTB representative. Read more
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇭🇰 WasabiCard surpasses 500,000 cards issued, marking a major growth milestone in digital payments. The achievement builds on broader momentum across the WasabiCard ecosystem, which now supports more than 100,000 users, works with over 200 business partners, serves 25+ countries, and has facilitated more than $1 billion in transaction volume to date.
🇺🇸 PayPal has introduced PayPal Ads ID, a new advertising identifier built on verified commerce data from PayPal and Venmo accounts. It uses transaction-backed, consented data to improve audience targeting, cross-device consistency, and attribution, while maintaining privacy through encryption and aggregation.
🇲🇾 Ant International launches open-sourced Agentic Mobile Protocol to drive AI commerce. Agentic Mobile Protocol (AMP) enables secure, AIOps-native agentic payment connections to mobile services, including digital wallets, banking apps, super apps, and mobile portals from phones to wearable devices.
🇮🇳 PhonePe crosses 50 million registered merchants across India ahead of IPO. The IPO-bound company noted its expansion from offering QR code-based payment solutions to providing a full-stack suite of financial tools, including working capital loans, Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals, and SmartSpeakers.
🇭🇺 Wise introduces Qvik Requests for clients in Hungary. The solution allows private users to transfer money from their bank accounts to their Wise HUF balance without paying the financial transaction duty. Keep reading
REGTECH NEWS
🇺🇸 Q2 Enhances account takeover protection with AI-enabled detection and real-time response capabilities. The solutions enable continuous monitoring across the digital banking journey, allowing financial institutions to identify threats earlier and respond more effectively.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇧🇷 Nubank to invest R$ 45 billion in Brazil in 2026. The invested amount will support AI-driven platforms, new financial products, infrastructure expansion, and lending capacity. The move reinforces its long-term commitment to its largest market, where it serves over 113 million customers.
🇪🇸 Revolut integrates Catalan into ATMs, web, and app for its 1.2 million customers. Revolut is expanding rapidly in Catalonia, rolling out Catalan language support across its ATMs, website, and app by 2027. The company is also scaling its ATM network in Spain with plans to reach up to 200 machines nationwide. Additionally, the FinTech neobank is to open its first physical store in Barcelona. The project is still in its early stages, and the company said the opening timeline would depend on construction progress.
🇫🇷 Qonto transforms into an AI-native FinTech, deploying two intelligent agents across 600,000 businesses. The Operator and The Analyst can execute routine banking operations through natural language requests, eliminating the manual work that currently costs SMEs up to 8 hours per week.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 Aven Bitcoin Visa card will offer a BTC-backed line of credit of up to $1 million. The so-called “machine-banking” startup aims to reduce borrowing costs by providing credit lines collateralized by users’ existing assets like home equity and now bitcoin.
🇺🇸 Gemini launches AI-Powered Agentic Trading for crypto users. The new feature allows artificial intelligence models to directly manage and execute crypto trades on its platform. Users can automate trades and risk management using predefined strategies.
🇺🇸 Block launched a new Bitkey hardware wallet with a secure touchscreen, alongside updates to Cash App that enable users to earn bitcoin automatically. The company also introduced proof of reserves, aiming to make bitcoin easier to secure, use, and spend in everyday transactions.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇺🇸 Disbo selects Modern Treasury to digitize payments for law firms. The partnership aims to build a digital disbursements platform, helping law firms and medical offices move away from paper checks toward faster ACH and real-time payments.
🇺🇸 Credit One Bank has partnered with Bright Money to integrate its credit card offerings via API, allowing users to apply directly within the Bright Money app. The collaboration streamlines access to credit products, including cards with 1% cash back rewards on everyday spending categories.
🇬🇧 Hitachi Digital Services announces strategic partnership with Stripe to transform payment infrastructure, debuts joint industry event. The collaboration aims to simplify payments, reduce friction, and accelerate digital transformation across insurance, hospitality, retail, and transportation sectors.
🇮🇳 Flipkart, Axis Bank, and PayU launch biometric card payments in India. Customers can complete purchases through issuer-level biometric verification, reducing dependence on SMS-based OTPs that can create delays, failed transactions, and added checkout friction.
🇩🇪 Nexi Implements Wero for eCommerce in Germany, enabling online merchants to adopt real-time account-to-account payments. The rollout, supported by the European Payments Initiative, marks a step toward a more unified and competitive European payments ecosystem.
🇺🇸 Customers Bank taps OpenAI for banking transformation. The collaboration aims to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across its commercial banking operations, marking a significant step toward becoming an AI-native financial institution.
🇬🇧 Everton line up CMC Markets as shirt sponsor in £30m deal. The agreement, reportedly worth £30m, reflects a broader shift as clubs seek new partners under the upcoming regulations. Read more
🌎 Cobre is now live on the Borderless.xyz Network is expanding stablecoin coverage and liquidity. The integration adds stablecoin on and off-ramp capabilities across Latin America, expanding Borderless.xyz’s liquidity depth in one of the fastest-growing regions for cross-border stablecoin payments.
🇿🇦 Bybit Pay expands to South Africa with MoneyBadger, enabling nationwide crypto QR payments. The integration leverages existing QR and pay link infrastructure, allowing retailers to receive settlement in South African rand through their current payment systems without needing to hold cryptocurrency or add new payment integrations.
🇺🇸 OnePay and Tempo partner to help shape the next generation of stablecoin-powered payments. The partnership's early efforts will center on areas like stablecoin payouts and instant account funding for OnePay's banking product. OnePay also plans to launch a validator on Tempo.
🌍 Yuno and Flutterwave partner to simplify global merchant access to African payments. The collaboration enables merchants using Yuno’s unified payments platform to instantly access Flutterwave’s extensive network of local payment methods through a single API integration.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
💰Over the last week, there were six FinTech deals in Europe, totaling €16.3m in disclosed funding, including 2 transactions in the UK, one in Italy, one in Ireland, one in Bulgaria, and one in the Netherlands.
🇨🇿 Tapaya raises €1M pre-seed to power payments on any device. Tapaya secured funding to simplify in-person payments by enabling acceptance on any device, reducing reliance on hardware, and streamlining integration for banks, FinTechs, and software platforms.
🇳🇬 Opera has valued OPay at around $3.1 billion, reflecting strong growth and assigning an 85% probability to an IPO within the next two years. The updated valuation highlights OPay’s expanding scale in Nigeria, with tens of millions of users and significant transaction volumes.
🇩🇰 Deutsche Börse Group invests in wealthtech Performativ. Albert Geisler Fox, CEO, Performativ, says: “With this investment, we will cement our position within the enterprise segment, bringing our technology to visionary private banks and ambitious large-scale wealth management providers.”
🇮🇳 Credilio bags ₹100 Cr for FD-backed credit card business novio. Credilio raised the funding, which will be used to scale its UPI-first fixed deposit credit card app novio, at a pre-money valuation of ₹300 Cr (about $31.7 Mn), founder and CEO Aditya Gupta told Inc42.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇫🇷 Worldline appoints Stefaan D'Hoore as Group Chief Risk & Compliance Officer. Stefaan D'Hoore brings more than twenty years of international experience in payments and financial services, with notable leadership roles at Visa and GE Capital.
🇺🇸 Jumio announces Mark Lorion as Chief Executive Officer. Lorion is an accomplished software executive with over three decades of experience scaling high-growth B2B companies. The leadership change comes as Jumio focuses on expanding its AI-driven identity intelligence platform to address rising fraud and evolving digital identity challenges.
Want your message in front of 275.000+ FinTech fanatics, founders, investors, and operators?
Comments ()