Revolut picks New York for its listing, because that is where the buyers are

Revolut, the London-based digital bank, wants its shares to trade first in New York. Its chief executive, Nik Storonsky, told Bloomberg Television on Thursday that the company is targeting a primary US listing if it decides to go public. “That was always the target, given the deep liquidity of the US market,” he told Bloomberg. He also said Revolut wants to “dominate” the American market, and plans to offer credit cards and loans there once it has a full US banking licence.

A listing is not close. Any offering is at least a year away, and earlier reports have pointed to 2028, Investing.com reported. But the choice of market says a lot about where a fast-growing European company thinks its shares will fetch the best price.

A large company already

Revolut was valued at $115bn in a private share sale, more than the stock market value of Barclays or Société Générale, according to the same report. It is profitable. Revenue rose 46% to $6.0bn in 2025 and profit before tax rose 57% to $2.3bn, the company reported in March. It had 68.3m retail customers at the end of the year, 30% more than a year earlier. The question is where investors would pay most for it.

Why New York

Storonsky’s argument is about buyers. In an interview with the French newspaper Les Echos in September, reported by City AM, he said a seller is better off in a very large market where buyers compete for shares than in a small one with few buyers. The US has institutional investors, hedge funds, fund managers and a great many individual investors, he said. In 2024 he called a London listing “not rational”, and he has pointed to the 0.5% stamp duty on UK share trading. If the UK offered a better product, Revolut would list there, he said, but so far the US product is “far ahead”. Revolut is still considering a second listing in London.

The numbers are on his side. US stock markets were worth $68.9tn in 2025, 43.7% of the world’s total and 4.4 times the next largest market, China, according to SIFMA’s annual fact book. Money raised in US initial public offerings rose 50% last year to $47.0bn. Deeper markets tend to mean more analysts, more index funds that must buy a stock once it is large enough, and more trading, all of which can support a higher valuation.

Others have gone first

Revolut would not be the first British financial technology company to make the move. Wise, the money-transfer company, started trading on Nasdaq in May as its primary listing and kept London as a secondary one, the law firm Cooley noted at the time. AstraZeneca, the drugmaker, has also upgraded its US listing, City AM noted.

Each such move is a small loss for London. A primary listing decides which market sets the price, which indices a company joins and where most of its shares trade. A secondary listing keeps a name on the board, but much of the trading and the attention go elsewhere.

A bank first, then a listing

The US plan rests on a banking licence. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which charters national banks, granted preliminary conditional approval to Revolut Bank US on 2 September, its decision letter shows. The bank would be based in Stamford, Connecticut, with no branches. Before it can open, it needs deposit insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and final approval from the OCC, and its parent companies have applied to the Federal Reserve to become bank holding companies. The approval does not yet cover a retail foreign exchange business.

Today Revolut serves US customers through partner banks insured by the FDIC. Its own bank would let it do so at lower cost and offer a broader range of products, the letter says. Credit cards and loans are where Storonsky sees the prize, and a growing American business would also make the case for an American listing stronger.

What to watch next

The remaining approvals from the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the OCC will decide when Revolut can start lending in the US. Whether London keeps a second listing will show how much of the market the UK can hold on to. Anthropic and OpenAI are also preparing to list, which will test how much new stock even the deepest market can absorb.