British neobank Revolut began operating its global account in Brazil this week, allowing transfers to the 40+ countries where the fintech is already up and running.
“We have already started customer onboarding”, Glauber Mota, CEO of Revolut in Brazil, told iupana. “We are sending thousands of invitations from this week to the next. Those who were already on our waiting list have priority.”
Cross-border retail transfers are a niche where Revolut believes it can compete against powerful local brands, such as Nubank. The fintech is also offering crypto services.
This week’s launch was a while coming: Mota had initially aimed to start operations ahead of the men’s football world cup last year, he told iupana almost a year ago.
International transfers is a market that has not been directly attacked by players like Nubank or PagBank, but where Revolut will go up against Wise, which has also rolled out a cross-border payment solution with competitive prices.
“There is a lot of space, especially in individuals, in international transfers and exchange rate positioning. They are high-friction markets, with many difficulties,” says Julián Colombo, fintech analyst and CEO of N5 Now, an open finance technology platform.
Colombo notes that although the world is interconnected, sending money between countries is expensive and complicated for users, so innovation will be welcome. That’s especially true in a context of digital nomads and inflation, which makes the most stable currencies a haven for savings. “There is a lot of friction and there is a lot of opportunity. Of course, the reason for this friction is also regulatory, but it is a minor type of regulation,” he says.