Welcome to Breaking Banks, the number one global fintech radio show and podcast. I’m Brett King. And I’m Jason Henricks.

Every week since 2013, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in financial services. From incumbents to unicorns, and from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help create a more innovative, inclusive, and healthy financial future. I’m J.P. Nichols, and this is Breaking Banks.

Welcome back to Breaking Banks. I am your host, Brett King. It’s great we’ve got a couple of returning organizations coming back to the show today.

This is actually a multi-part segment or series that we’ve been doing over the last couple of years with how Mastercard helps fintech visionaries reimagine the future of finance. And there’s obviously a lot of traction in this next generation or next age of data-based, AI-based fintechs emerging and so forth. Mastercard helps these emerging newer fintechs drive smarter decisions, enabling the partnerships across the payments ecosystem in particular.

And of course, Mastercard brings its insights and world-class expertise and cutting-edge tech to these relationships and this capability. So we are very happy to have Mastercard back, and they’re joined by another returning fintech, Revolut. It’s been a while since we had them on the show.

That was before the pandemic. But we’re welcoming Jenny McNaught. She’s the Senior Principal Advisor in Consulting Services for UK and Ireland for Mastercard, and Fiona Davies, who is the Head of Growth UK, Ireland and the Nordics for Revolut.

Jen and Fiona, welcome to Breaking Banks. Thanks for having us. Great.

So, Jen, let’s start with you. Talk about what you do in terms of the advisory team and the stuff that you do for Mastercard. Wonderful.

Well, again, thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be here. I lead in the UK and Ireland our advisory team.

It’s part of the services business of Mastercard, and my background is really in consulting for more years than I’d like to admit, and over the last sort of 10 years specialising and doing this type of work with financial institutions and in the payment space. I’ve been at Mastercard for just about six years, and almost as long as I’ve been here, I’ve been supporting the Mastercard Revolut partnership. So, this is great to be talking together with Revolut.

I wanted to share with you that I get excited every day when I come to work in the UK because of the wonderful dynamic in this market. It is a mature market, but there’s still so much room for growth, and it’s a really great market for fintechs like Revolut to operate in. We recently had a study with EY, and we found super high card adoption rates.

Penetration is really high in the UK market, and it’s interesting. Our consumers here love innovative technology, love trying what’s new in the market. We see roughly 65% of adults use online banking, and about 57% use mobile banking.

So, again, you see that really resonates with opportunities for growth. I mean, I think that’s a really good point, but when you look at millennials in particular, the numbers are very much higher, right? Millennials, Gen Zs, Alphas. We’re talking more like 85, 86% mobile adoption for those segments, which are, of course, the growth segments and the next opportunity.

And of course, you can’t really go talking about that sort of growth without talking about the most downloaded fintech app in the European space, Fiona, Revolut. Welcome to the show. What a great segue.

Yeah. Tell me a bit about yourself and the work you’re doing at Revolut. Absolutely.

Thanks so much, Brett. So, as you mentioned, I’m head of growth for UK, Ireland, and the Nordics, so overseeing the entire region, both for Revolut retail, the consumer app, as well as the business app. I’ve been at Revolut for five years.

Actually, much of that time was spent in product marketing and heading up the consumer product marketing team. So, I’ve had the pleasure and the opportunity of joining a new team and kind of having my personal growth journey as well into the growth department and overseeing this region, gaining a lot more responsibility around budgets, new channels, new ways of working, but also bringing more of that product knowledge and connection from my previous role there. So, yeah, since I’ve joined and transitioned into this role over the summer, we’ve hit some really awesome milestones in these markets, notably this 10 million customer milestone in the UK, which is our home market and our biggest market.

Super exciting. We’ve been granted our UK banking license, and now we’ve entered the mobilization stage, building the requirements needed to build a UK bank. So, that’s been amazing to all be happening since I’ve joined this role.

So, really excited about that. That’s fantastic. I mean, it must be a really like, you know, given what’s happening at the moment, like Revolut is now getting on to 10 years old.

And actually, when is the 10th anniversary? It must be coming up anytime, right? Yeah, we hit our nine-year anniversary over the summer. So, 10 years next year. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, that’s pretty cool. But you’re like one of the old kids in the FinTech block now.

But I did want to ask you, given Revolut’s really strong position in Europe, generally, why have you separated the Nordics out as a special region? I understand why the UK and Ireland, obviously, after Brexit, but why are the Nordics separate to the sort of larger EU operation? Yeah. So, I think what we’ve been doing is focusing regionally and really seeing the power of local marketing. So, we have kind of core and centralized teams focused on growth and channel specific growth and then regional focused teams.

So, it’s not that the Nordics isn’t part of Europe in that sense, but really just looking how we can like divide and conquer. And geographically and regionally, you know, the Nordics is in the north of Europe. So, we’ve kind of looked at dividing and conquering that way.

No, I mean, that itself is a pretty interesting market for FinTech. You know, they’ve been totally progressive. Yeah, they’re extremely evolved and used to using digital banking products and FinTech.

So, it’s a unique market. It’s a crowded space and a competitive space. But it’s cool.

They definitely have a big affinity for products like Revolut. Cool. And of course, the UK performance with 10 million customers, that’s fantastic growth and a nice way to celebrate it by getting your license there.

And I know it’s still in the rollout phase. But Jen, let’s come back to Mastercard. And, you know, you’ve said you’ve been working with Revolut now for six years.

They’re a very interesting brand to be working with. But, you know, tell me about how this relationship started off and what support you really have been giving Revolut and other FinTechs through that period. Yeah, absolutely.

It’s been fascinating to witness the Revolut growth journey. And I’d like to sort of say that our support has been across supporting that growth journey, you know, as we support other FinTechs as well, all the way through their life cycle. I think if we look at some of the more recent initiatives that we’ve partnered on together, it’s all about being about how do we support growth, customer acquisition, driving that awareness of the brand and growing that portfolio.

We’ve also focused some of our attentions on what do you do once you have portfolio growth? How do you engage with customers in that early life cycle? And this is really attuned to broadly how we work with FinTech partners as well in the industry, wherever they are in that cycle of growth, supporting them, making sure that we bring the right services, the right solutions to help them go after and unlock new opportunities or become more efficient or scale. I mean, that efficiency, that operational efficiency element is becoming such a foundational data point for organizations like Revolut. You know, when we look at their ability, you know, not only is cost of acquisition cheaper, but the new stack and the new capabilities, you know, this really gives them the ability to operate at much lower costs and better margins.

So, I mean, I’m not doing the sales pitch for the VCs because you guys already have that handled, but so, Fiona, in terms of the technical expertise and the expertise that MasterCard brings to the table, what is those things that you rely on and that you draw upon? Yeah, we really value having a partnership with MasterCard for a few reasons. So, they have great extensive expertise in marketing services, especially when it comes to sponsorships and events, which is something we are investing more and more in. And then, kind of in that realm, guidance on exceptional talent that they work with.

And I think the third thing to note in terms of really valuing this partnership and the support that we get from MasterCard is around this overall trust and reputation factor that MasterCard brings to the table. Very good. Jen, just coming back to that, what about, you know, some practical elements? So, customer acquisition, you know, efforts, Fiona was talking about media support and things like that.

Tell us about how tactically, you know, you help with those core aspects. Yeah, absolutely. So, we can get as involved as our partner requires us to be in that process, all the way through from helping to design the process to supporting on the execution efforts.

And, you know, Fiona mentioned that some of the sponsorship assets, I think that’s a really great shout. To use some of the UK examples of names that might resonate, you know, we have a number of high-profile cultural and sporting institutions that we have relationships with, like the Brit Awards, you know, UA for Champions League. And we can leverage these sponsorship assets with our partners to bring that extra bit of pricelessness for their customers and unlock those experiences.

So, that’s one part of what we do. And I think the other part is, you know, from the services relationship, always looking at what is the opportunity for us to bring our data insights, our market expertise that helps to support, you know, is this the right business decision? Is it a good strategy to go after? Absolutely. Fiona, I know you’ve got 10 million customers in the UK market, but tell us a little bit about the penetration in the Irish market, if you can.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, of course, UK being our biggest market numbers-wise, but Ireland kind of fascinatingly is our most loved, you know, loved market in a way because we have seen amazing kind of penetration and reaching near saturation levels there. So, about three in four people in Ireland have a Revolut account.

It’s definitely become a verb there in terms of revoluting each other. And brand awareness levels are really kind of maxing out there and reaching peak levels. So, yeah, I’ve been very excited to see the kind of the customer love that we’ve gained and really become a household name in Ireland.

And Jen, I’m guessing that that’s positive for Mastercard as well. What, you know, what value is that bought in terms of your relationship with Irish customers? Can you talk about that? Of course, it’s innovation is something that is top of the agenda. And honestly, I think what Fiona said really resonates there.

Our customers in Ireland are also really keen on supporting and unlocking new innovation efforts. And I think overall, that comes back to, you know, choice and looking at new technological solutions. Innovation is good for the industry, and it’s great to see the growth.

Yeah. I mean, that’s, I think, you know, when we look at the core metrics of what the challenge of banks in general, but certainly Revolut has achieved broadly in the UK and in Europe is changing expectations of what the day to day money experience should be like. You know, I think that’s fairly clear that that innovation is there.

Let’s talk about the trust element, because you mentioned that before, Fiona. You know, in terms of the cultural elements of, you know, Revolut and how you think about customer relationships, where do you, you know, you know, how does trust play into that dynamic? Yeah, so trust is kind of at the foundation of every relationship, right? And I think to that point, I was making about, you know, picking great partners like Mastercard, who bring a lot in terms of trust and reputation to the table and have a really solid track record. And have similar values around putting customers at the center of what they do.

And I think is something that makes this partnership work really well and something that we really value in this kind of realm of trust and wanting to continue to earn that and build and grow in that. Especially, I mean, I know you mentioned we’re kind of like an old kid on the block in the FinTech space, but a new kid on the block in the greater banking landscape. So, so, yeah.

And Jen, talk about how trust is part of the relationship that you bring with the FinTechs and with Revolut. Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting, Fiona said trust is foundational.

And we think trust is earned as well. You know, a customer that has a meaningful relationship with their financial institution, that’s where that trust resides. And knowing what is important to your customers.

So at Mastercard, we know that customers trust us because they can pay and know that they can get paid very securely on our network. And we know that safety and security, if I use that as an example, is an issue that customers are concerned about and want to ensure that they are working with trusted partners, especially when it comes to finances. So that’s why if we use a Mastercard example, we’ve invested very heavily into cybersecurity and AI capabilities over the past few years.

And another aspect that I wanted to, I was just thinking about as you were talking about, Brett, is on this podcast, actually, I heard you refer to the cool factor before, which is awesome, right? And that’s absolutely true. But that trust is more than just the cool factor. It’s also, you know, the safety and security that comes with the product and solution, the superior service, you know, the benefits and the product that resonates and works with the needs of that customer.

I think it’s really interesting when you start to look at all of those levers that make up trust. Actually, so Fiona, tell me what you think about this, right, as a practitioner and Jen, you as well. I actually think that trust in the way we talk about it now in financial services has changed significantly over the last 20 years.

I think that trust used to be about, you know, the dependable brand and the asset size and, you know, all of those things. You could see branches on the corner of the street. And now I think it’s about trusted utility, right? Because what is it that really, you know, Revolut’s really built their reputation on and Mastercard has built their reputation on is that every time you need this to work, it’s going to work, right? And that performance at the level that we’re talking about, close to 50 million customers now, you don’t get to that level of performance dealing with financial transactions unless you’ve got a really solid architecture and infrastructure in place.

You know, you couldn’t, you just couldn’t do that. And so that’s, I think that utility aspect is becoming a core part of the way people measure trust in digital organizations these days. Do you think that’s reasonable? Yeah.

I mean, we talked a lot about this kind of proven track record and I think showing, not telling. And I think to your point, at the heart of this is people’s money and being reliable and dependable and working in the way that they need it to work is really kind of at the core of it. So making sure that we’re investing and innovating and in data protection and financial security and have the support and service when it’s needed has been a huge focus for us.

And we know partners like Mastercard have invested in very similar ways. So that’s how our synergies kind of align to your point about what people really value in that trust and how it’s earned. Absolutely at the heart, isn’t it? And once you have that trust, that drives the loyalty, that drives the repeat usage, that drives, you know, a customer telling their family, their friends, the spreading of the product and the brand.

So Fiona, I’ll tell you a little story. I was in Koh Phangan a few weeks ago, which is one of the small islands in the south of Thailand. And we get a lot of European visitors this type of time of year, you know, over the summer.

Not right now, but obviously the summer vacation time. And there was two girls and we had to get a taxi from the airport or where the ferry terminal was rather, because there’s no airport on Koh Phangan, where the ferry comes in to a taxi to the different hotels. And the taxi driver would only take cash or pay QR code.

And so these French girls who couldn’t speak a lot of English were sort of freaking out because they didn’t have any cash. And my friend that was with them just said, you have Revolut, right? And they’re like, yes. All right, well, I’ll give you the cash and you can Revolut me the money.

This was happening in Thailand between a Brazilian and two French girls. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. We love to hear that.

And the fact that that was the first solution that they came up with, right? A, that shows the utility and B, it shows the trust. I would argue that. Yeah.

And how global we are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So how many countries are you guys in now? 35 or? Ah, 38 and growing, I believe. Yeah. All right.

And just announced looking at the UAE markets. But let’s get back to, of course, the big milestone that’s coming up. We expect sometime in Q4, you guys will hit this 50 million customer number.

I’m sure you guys know where you’re at in that. But let’s talk. Only checking every morning when I wake up.

Exactly. Let’s talk specifically about this revolutionaries event you’ve got coming up. Tell us a bit more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m really excited about this upcoming milestone. I think that story that you just mentioned about people from opposite countries and opposite ends of the world meeting in some other country and some other part of the world and coming together.

And that’s a great example of two of our 50 million customers across the globe and only growing. So to celebrate that milestone, we’re having a big campaign and event. We’re calling the revolutionaries event to celebrate 50 million customers.

It’ll be taking place in our home base in the UK market in London to thank them by giving them a chance to attend this one of a kind two-day event, really at a wow venue in the heart of London’s Soho and giving them access to some of the brightest, most revolutionary names in music, sport, fashion, gaming, travel, business and arts. That’s awesome. Janique, just before we wrap up, you know, if someone’s listening to this and saying this is a really cool story and how can we get in on this? Where can they go to reach out to your team at Mastercard that’s working on the FinTech partnership side? Absolutely.

We would love to hear from them. Please reach out to any Mastercard representatives that will direct you to Mastercard services or the Mastercard FinTech team. We have a number of resources and learnings that we could share.

And as I said, it doesn’t matter which type of vertical you support, where you are in the payments ecosystem, where you play or what your size is, we’ve got something to support you with and guidance that we can provide. So please do reach out and looking forward to it. Fantastic.

And if you’re looking for a URL, you can go to https slash slash go dot Mastercard services dot com slash FinTech. So that’s the landing page that’s also available. And you can find out a little bit more about partnerships like what we have with Revolut.

Fiona, just apart from the 50 million celebration that’s coming up and the 10th anniversary next year, what makes you excited about the future with Revolut? What makes me excited about the future? I think, yeah, the future is really limitless. And I think just from the last five years, the growth internally and externally is beyond what I could have imagined. And so really excited being still new to this role and these amazing milestones have happened with the greater team, but really seeing what impact I can bring and see how this event goes and this campaign goes and a lot of exciting new opportunities, sponsorships, events coming in 2025.

So stay tuned. Well, having met Nick and been on some panels and stuff with him in the past, I will say he’s not going to be happy with 50 million either. Oh, no, this is this is just the beginning.

This isn’t going to be talking about 100 million, 500 million. Let’s go. Exactly.

Let’s do it. Right. Yeah.

So that’s a really positive way to finish off the conversation today. So for both Janique McNaught and Fiona Davis, Jen and Fiona, thank you for joining us on Breaking Banks today. And thank you for telling us a bit more about the story.

Thanks. I loved it. All right.

We’re going to take a quick break. You’re listening to Breaking Banks. We’ll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Welcome back to Breaking Banks. Well, if you’ve been watching what’s happened since the Trump victory in respect to crypto, things are getting a little crazy. Bitcoin at the time of the podcast release today is hovering around ninety one to ninety two thousand U.S. dollars.

That’s seen a 42 percent increase in the price of Bitcoin in just the past month. Lots of crypto is up. And, you know, we ask the question, what really has sort of created this change in posture for what’s happening in the crypto markets? And that is that, you know, obviously, Elon Musk is a big pro crypto guy.

He’s even named this new government efficiency department, DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE, of course, is a very famous altcoin that Elon has had a really unusual relationship with over the last few years. But there’s really some interesting and exciting momentum building behind Bitcoin and crypto as a result of a change in posture from the U.S. government.

It seems like Trump may be more favorable to this. Trump has been rather critical of central bank digital currencies, not only because China has one of the more serious attempts at a central bank digital currency, but the U.S., of course, is much more supportive of a free market approach to this. So this includes stable coins, crypto and so forth.

Now, this is a big change of posture because Wall Street and the regulators in the U.S. have been very heavily focused on, you know, controlling and limiting, you know, crypto efforts over the last few years. We’ve seen, for example, it’s been very, very difficult to get ETFs and so forth around Bitcoin launched. So this could be a major policy shift in respect to crypto.

So I thought for today, before we wrap up, we’d have Henry Aslanian. Henry used to be a correspondent on our show for many years. He’s now based in the UAE, in Dubai, where he runs the Crypto TV series for CNBC Arabia.

And this is what he had to say about the potential shift around the U.S.’s position with crypto as a result of Trump’s successful election to the president of the United States. Here’s Henry Aslanian. Hi, everyone.

Now that Donald Trump has been elected president, the big question is, what’s the impact going to be on crypto markets and on the crypto ecosystem? A couple of things to watch. First is that really we may see complete 180 when it comes to regulatory approach to digital assets in the United States. Of course, there’ll be a leadership change at the SEC.

It’ll be interesting to see if a lot of the legal actions that were taken against crypto firms will be dropped as well. But one thing is for sure, the U.S. will become, as of January, way more welcoming to crypto. And this actually will catalyze a lot of elements, not only from investors looking at it, but also I think from how crypto firms operate.

So very, very positive development for the crypto ecosystem in the United States. Second will be the entry of institutional players. A number of players in recent months, in recent years actually, were not entering the crypto space because they were worried about the anti-crypto stance of the U.S. regulators.

This is going to change already. We’ve seen already in the last couple of months, even state pensions like Florida being the latest one advocating for holding crypto. I expect to see this now not only from state pensions, but most importantly, from asset allocators, family offices.

The ETF was a catalyst initially, and now this sea change from regulatory and openness to crypto will catalyze a lot of things as well. So I think there’s definitely an area to watch the entry of institutional players. People are going to benefit from this will be the asset managers, the ETF, and I think the broader industry more collectively.

And number three will be really the wave of M&A. There was a lot of institutional players as well, often infrastructure players that were looking at entering the crypto space and have not done so in the last four years because again, they were worried about the anti-crypto stance in the U.S. I think we should expect to see now a wave of M&A from the various verticals of the crypto industry from really starting from infrastructure plays to more cutting edge stuff when it comes to DeFi, Web3 as well on that perspective. So I think Trump’s win may have impact on many things around the world, but I guess when it comes to crypto specifically, this is very positive, not only for the crypto ecosystem in the U.S., but also globally as well.

So very interesting development to watch. We should not be surprised to see a further price action in crypto. Many would argue this was already baked in, but again, there will be a lot more momentum now there’s been clarity on it.

Wouldn’t be surprised we hit an all time high on Bitcoin and other assets over the next couple of days and weeks as well. Hope this is a useful update and thank you very much and stay tuned for more updates from over the next couple of days. So I hope you guys found that interesting.

That’s it for the show for us this week. Stay tuned if you haven’t got any Bitcoin as yet, that’s probably too late. But definitely, you know, this machine readable currency movement is only going to get stronger.

Stablecoin supporting smart contracts, CBDC supporting cross-border capabilities and tokenization for local market operation. These are all areas which we’re going to see a lot more development over the next few years. Ultimately, though, as we move towards more smart contract operation and we put those together in autonomous machine based marketplaces, the likelihood is that AI, as we’ve seen in other applications like medicines and so forth, may come up with alternative approaches to digital currencies that we can’t even think of or imagine today, that are more efficient means of value exchange.

So this is still very much the start of the disruption around digital money that we’re likely to see over the next couple of decades. Anyway, thanks for joining Breaking Banks this week. I hope you enjoyed our session with the team at Mastercard and Revolut.

Revolut hitting their 50 million customer target this month. It’s certainly big news for them and it’s big news for Breaking Banks. Thanks for being with us.

That’s it for another week of the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks. This episode was produced by our US-based production team, including producer Lisbeth Severins, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham, with social media support from Sylvie Johnson. If you like this episode, don’t forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media or leave us a five-star review on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Facebook, or wherever it is that you listen to our show.

Those actions help other people find our podcast and in return, that helps us build an audience that can be supported by sponsorship, so we can continue to provide you with our award-winning content every week. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you on Breaking Banks next week.