Revolut Partners with Visa to Expand Into North, South America and Asia

United Kingdom-based digital banking app Revolut announced a major partnership with Visa to expand its services globally across 24 new markets, including North America.

According to a Sept. 30 press release, this will bring 56 markets worldwide in total into Revolut's reach.

Per the release, the terms of the agreement stipulate that Revolut will primarily issue Visa-branded cards as it pursues its global expansion push.

Visa will enable the app to launch services initially in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and the United States.

The strengthened partnership between the two firms builds on their existing cooperation, which saw Revolut first issue Visa cards to its users across Europe in July 2017, says press release.

In an interview with Reuters on Sept. 30, Revolut CEO and founder Nikolay Storonsky revealed that the firm will hire some 3,500 new staff members following the new deal, bringing its total workforce to around 5,000.

Storonsky told Reuters that the average Revolut client holds around 1,000 euros in their account.

A period of negative publicity was followed by reports from U.K. broadsheets alleging Revolut executives deliberately decommissioned Anti-Money Laundering software in 2017.

In late 2017, Revolut rolled out support for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

In June, Visa was named as one of the firms to have backed Facebook's Libra stablecoin project via its membership in a newly-created independent governance consortium - the Libra Association.