Revolut expands business offering with digital payments service

Challenger bank Revolut is bolstering its business offering as it moves into merchant acquiring allowing businesses to accept online card payments.

Revolut’s chief executive Nik Storonsky announced, at this year’s Web Summit, that its business segment had launched an acquiring solution, which will allow businesses in 13 European countries to accept card payments online directly into their account. 

The product will pit Revolut against digital payment firms Stripe and Ayden in what is now a high growth market.

Revolut Business Acquire will form part of the bank’s business starter pack which it claims provides firms with a solution to help them manage everything in one place without the need to alternate between acquiring and banking platforms. 

It comes as businesses shift to social media platforms amid the pandemic and use Instagram, Facebook or TikTok as their new storefronts. Revolut claims its new acquiring solution will alleviate the burden of payments by enabling businesses to send secure payment links to customers. 

“Companies across Europe know that it’s now essential to their success to be able to do business online,” said Storonsky. “That’s why we introduced a new secure way to accept payments through websites and we have enabled customers without an online presence to get paid fast through secure payment links. Our mission is to democratise acceptance and we are already on the way.” 

It is the second product Revolut has launched this week. On Wednesday the bank announced it had partnered with Modulr to allow its UK customers opportunity to be paid a day early, and launched a web app for its regular users. 

The push on new products comes as Revolut more than tripled its losses from 2018 in its annual report in August. Although the neobank saw a rise in its customer base during the first lockdown, it saw a decline in interchange revenue, which makes up over 60 per cent of its income. 

Business customers will pay lower fees for the new acquiring service, with a 1.3 per cent fee for UK and EEA consumer cards and 2.8 per cent for all other cards. 

The new acquiring solution places Revolut in direct competition with Stripe, a third-party payment processor, that has soared in valuation following the boom in online transactions during lockdown. 

Stripe recently announced it would be partnering with some of the world’s largest banks to offer a range of financial services. 

Revolut Business customers in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden are all able to accept payments online. The product will roll out to eligible businesses in the EEA in the coming weeks.