Revolut, a United Kingdom-headquartered challenger bank, has launched its open bank service in France. This will allow the platform’s 1 million customers in the country to directly connect their third-party bank accounts with their Revolut account.
Announced on Thursday, the open banking feature will allow Revolut retail customers to connects bank accounts with seven banks - Crédit Mutuel, Caisse d'Epargne, Banque Populaire, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, BNP Paribas and Hello Bank.
Revolut first launched the open bank service in February and extended the service to Ireland last month. The service was launched in collaboration with TrueLayer, a provider of financial APIs.
“With the deployment of our Open Banking product, our customers in France can now consult and manage several bank accounts in the same place, allowing them to have a global view of their daily expenses without having to switch from one banking app to another,” Joshua Fernandes, product owner of open banking at Revolut, said. “We are delighted to see the new regulations facilitating a more open banking world, for the benefit of the greatest number of people.”
Preparing to extend services for millions of customers
Notably, the feature only allows Revolut customers to view their bank account balances and other transaction details from the app, with some additional budgeting features.
The startup also received permission from the Payment Initiation Services (PIS) to roll-out services for its UK-customers to even initiate banking transactions directly from its application.
For French customers, the app will also top up their accounts directly from one of the linked external accounts, but no timeline for that has been mentioned.
“There has been a certain degree of skepticism regarding the progress of PSD2 in the EU, however, this partnership shows that it is advancing at pace,” Francesco Simoneschi, co-founder and CEO of TrueLayer, added. “We're certain that, with France's reputation for technological innovation, that both consumers and businesses will be quick to recognize these benefits and embrace Open Banking.”
Revolut, which is also one of the most valued European Fintech , also prepared for the post-Brexit market by transferring a chunk of its European customers to a new Lithuania-licensed bank.
