It’s been quite a busy week for UK-based fintech Revolut. The startup celebrated two million users, revealed it was looking to apply for a U.S. banking license, sought to hire 100 new employees in Poland, and now has formed a partnership with QIWI to expand its services to Russia. It was reported earlier this week that Revolut’s services in Russia will now run on the payment infrastructure of QIWI Bank through open APIs. It was revealed:
“QIWI APIs provide access to the infrastructure of QIWI Bank, including its banking licenses and technologies for customer identification, payment processing, and card issuance. QIWI and Revolut believe that the partnership has many potential synergies that arise from combining expertise in the development of fintech projects for various consumer niches. The partnership is preliminary targeting one of the growing niches of the Russian market – an audience which values savings and financial efficiency, travels actively, has strong international connections, and is interested in products such as low-cost FX money transfers.”
Speaking about the partnership, Andrey Protopopov, Head of IT and Product of QIWI Group, stated:
“QIWI is one of the first Russian companies that has implemented a number of APIs that allow the use of QIWI Bank infrastructure as a platform for developing fintech projects. We optimized our technological processes and opened our payment infrastructure in order to help accelerate the launch of internationally recognized and demanded fintech projects in Russia. Now we are ready to go international with this platform, starting with the partnership with the leading European fintech-startup company Revolut. Partnership with QIWI helps Revolut to be in full compliance with the Russian legislation and offers easy integration with the developed payment infrastructure, allowing the project team to focus on attracting new users in Russia and developing new functionality of the application.”
Revolut added it will only provide financial services to individuals in Russia, and during the launch phase, basic product offering will be available including a mobile application and a multi-currency Visa card that allows to make payments, money and FX transfers in 130 currencies, as well as cash withdrawals from ATMs around the world.
