Mastercard and Revolut announced a partnership to launch Revolut cards in the U.S. by the end of the year.
- This is part of an expansion of the two firms' relationship, enabling the issuance of cards in any market around the world where Mastercard is accepted
- Mastercard has been working with Revolut since its launch in 2015 and participated in the network’s accelerator program, Start Path.
- The two businesses will partner on all of the cards issued in the U.S. and a minimum of 50 percent of all existing and future cards Revolut issues in Europe. Outside of Europe, the split will be 75 percent Visa and 25 percent Mastercard.
- The partnership will also see Revolut onboard some of Mastercard’s latest technology within its product and solutions, to begin with it will leverage Mastercard’s Send platform.
Revolut's ambitions are global and the tie-up with Mastercard is intended to help the challenger bank reach its expansion targets.
- The global expansion will also enable Revolut to reach markets in Asia Pacific and Latin America such as: Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil and Mexico.
This partnership comes just weeks after Revolut announced a global partnership with Visa.
- In that announcement, Visa was to help enable Revolut to launch initially in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and the United States.
- Revolut first began issuing Visa cards to its customers across Europe in July 2017. Since that time, Revolut has worked with the payments company to issue Visa-branded cards in every major European market.
- “What we’ve been working really hard on is accelerating Revolut’s launch in the U.S.,” Sue Kelsey, Mastercard’s executive vice president of global prepaid and financial inclusion, told CNBC. “This will allow us 100% issuance of Revolut accounts on Mastercard” to begin with, she added.