Revolut Leads UK Fintech.
Open Banking Is Rewiring the Rails Underneath.

Revolut is now the most valuable fintech in the UK by a wide margin. In July 2026, Revolut confirmed that a secondary share sale was underway. Reuters reported an implied valuation of $115 billion, about 53% above the $75 billion valuation from November 2025. The transaction involved existing shares, allowing eligible shareholders and employees to sell holdings rather than raising new capital for the company.

The gap to the rest of the field is large. A September 2026 ranking by Multiples.vc puts FNZ second at $20 billion, followed by Blockchain.com ($14 billion) and Checkout.com ($12 billion). The UK has around 50 fintech unicorns across private, public and acquired companies.

A valuation like this reflects many factors at once: product breadth, international expansion, licensing progress, revenue growth and investor appetite. Open Banking is one part of the backdrop, not the explanation. But it is the part that matters most to anyone building or running payments in the UK and Europe.

Revolut’s valuation reflects more than one payment trend. Its connection to Open Banking is more concrete: in September 2025, the company announced Pay by Bank for its payment gateway, allowing eligible merchants to accept payments directly from customers’ bank accounts alongside cards. This illustrates how Open Banking is becoming part of merchant payment infrastructure. For PSPs and merchants, the questions are practical: which banks and markets are supported, when funds become available, and how these flows work alongside existing payment methods.

What Open Banking actually changed

Open Banking lets a licensed third party access a customer's account data or initiate a payment from that account through a regulated API, with the customer's explicit consent. Two use cases came out of it:

• Account information. With consent, apps can read balances and transactions for budgeting, lending decisions, onboarding checks and reconciliation.
• Payment initiation. A provider can start an account-to-account (A2A) transfer directly from the payer's bank, usually authenticated in the bank's own app. No card number is involved.

In the UK, adoption is now measurable at scale. Open Banking Limited reports that the ecosystem passed one billion cumulative payments and 100 billion API calls in mid-2026, with monthly payments above 40 million. Sweeping variable recurring payments (VRPs), which let users move money between their own accounts under a standing consent, are among the fastest-growing segments.

For merchants and PSPs, Open Banking payment initiation can enable faster bank transfers without card interchange or card-data collection for that payment flow. Provider fees still apply, and merchant access to funds depends on the underlying payment scheme and the provider’s settlement model. Our earlier piece on reducing settlement risk with Open Banking flows covers the settlement side in detail.

The rules differ by market

Open Banking is not one global product. Availability, scope and liability rules depend on the jurisdiction:

• United Kingdom. Mandated by the CMA for the largest banks and run under a common standard. Payment initiation is mature; commercial VRPs beyond sweeping are still being rolled out.
• European Union. PSD2 created access rights, but API quality has varied between countries and banks. The PSD3 and Payment Services Regulation package, politically agreed in November 2025, aims to set more prescriptive API and authentication requirements. Final adoption and application dates are still being completed.
• United States. The CFPB finalised its Section 1033 personal financial data rights rule in 2024. A court stayed its compliance dates in October 2025, and the CFPB has announced plans to amend the rule. This framework concerns access to financial data; it does not establish a UK-style payment initiation regime. (Open Banking Tracker) Bank-data access still runs mostly on bilateral agreements and aggregators.

The practical result: a payment method that converts well in the UK may be unavailable, partly covered or differently regulated in the next market. Any A2A strategy has to be designed country by country.

Why orchestration matters here

Each new rail adds another provider, another API, another reconciliation format and another set of failure modes. That is where a payment orchestration layer earns its place. Instead of hard-wiring every method into checkout, the business connects once and decides centrally which method and provider to use, by country, currency, amount or customer profile.

The Payneteasy Payment Orchestration Platform is built for exactly this control layer. It is a technology platform, not an acquirer: clients keep their own providers and their own risk. It includes:

• 1,000+ pre-built integrations with providers worldwide, connected through a single integration;
• smart routing and cascading across connected providers, with retries configured according to response codes, provider capabilities and applicable scheme rules;
• unified reconciliation across providers and payment methods;
• support for multiple currencies and payment methods through connected providers, with availability depending on the integration, market and provider agreement;
• 130+ anti-fraud filters, PCI DSS Level 1 certification and a 3DS Adapter for PSD2/SCA flows on card payments.

Where the required integrations are available, orchestration can help configure A2A and card options for different markets. Adding a method may still require provider onboarding, checkout changes and testing. Switching from A2A to a card payment requires a separate customer-authorised payment flow. For a wider view of the account-to-account trend, see our A2A payments overview.

The takeaway

Revolut's valuation shows how much value the market assigns to fintechs that own the customer relationship. Open Banking shows where some of the underlying payment flows are moving. For PSPs and merchants, the job is to offer the methods each market actually supports, without rebuilding the payment stack every time the rules change.

Want to see which payment methods and routes you can run in your markets? Talk to the Payneteasy team about the payment solutions available for your business.

Sources

• Bloomberg, 22 Jul 2026 — Revolut confirms $115B valuation in secondary share sale
• Dealroom — Revolut valuation up 53% in 8 months
• Multiples.vc — Fintech Unicorns of the UK (22 Sep 2026)
• Open Banking Limited — 1 billion payments and 100 billion API calls (30 Jul 2026)
• Morrison Foerster — PSD3 and PSR key developments (29 Apr 2026)
• Open Banking Tracker — Section 1033 status