Revolut has now become Europe’s most valuable start-up after they secured a $45bn Valuation in a share sale by employees, defying wider fintech downturn. The UK government  seeks to persuade it to list in London rather than New York.

The UK bank said the Coatue, DJ Capital Partners and Tiger Global were among the institutional investors that had bought shares from staff, after they acquired $500min worth at a price of $865.42 a share.  The valuation is higher than $33bn Revolut achieved in a 2021 fund-raising led by SoftBank and Tiger Global and makes UK’s second-most valuable bank –behind only HSBC and ahead of Barclays, Lloyds  Banking Group and NatWest.

Revolut secured a highly anticipated UK banking licence only this summer and make Revolut’s initial public offering even more  sought after by global stock exchanges.

Revolut start-ups  exceeded that of rivals Checkout.com and Klarna’s valuation dwindled from $46bn to less than $7bn in a 2022 fundraise, while Checkout cut its internal valuation to $11bn the same year, having previously secured a $40bn valuation.

Revoult’s price tag  is below that of US growth companies in the sector including  Stripe, which was last valued at $65bn, and US listed Brazilian digital bank Nubank, which has a market capitalisation of $66bn.

Revolut co-founders, CEO Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, said they would rather keep the company private, but in the event of floatation, would probably choose New York. “The London Exchange is much less liquid so I just don’t see the point”, Storonsky said at the time.

The share sale values Storonsky’s personal stake in the company at almost $8bn. Revolut has more than 45mn customers globally including  roughly 9mn in the UK where it was founded in 2015.