Revolut’s Global Gambit: Fueled by Nasdaq’s RegTech Engine

LONDON and NEW YORK – November 26, 2025 – In the high-stakes world of global finance, speed and scale are the currencies of success. For a fintech disruptor like Revolut, which has amassed over 65 million customers in under a decade, the ambition is boundless. But rapid global expansion is a tightrope walk over a chasm of regulatory complexity. This week's announcement that Revolut is significantly expanding its partnership with Nasdaq, consolidating its regulatory reporting onto the Nasdaq AxiomSL platform, is far more than a simple technology deal. It is a masterclass in how modern financial institutions are weaponizing compliance, turning a traditional growth inhibitor into a strategic accelerator.

This move reveals a critical truth in today's market: for a firm with ambitions stretching from Mexico to India, the underlying infrastructure is as crucial as the customer-facing app. By embedding a platform used by 90% of the world's most systemically important banks, Revolut is not just buying a piece of software; it is acquiring a scalable foundation built to navigate the shifting sands of international financial law, freeing it to focus on what it does best: innovation.

The Compliance Bottleneck to Global Ambition

Revolut's growth trajectory is nothing short of audacious. The firm has publicly stated its goal of reaching 100 million customers by mid-2027 and launching in over 30 new markets by 2030, backed by a planned $13 billion investment. This is not a theoretical exercise. The company is actively establishing a banking presence in Mexico, advancing into Colombia and Argentina, setting up a tech hub in the Philippines, and preparing for a major launch in India. Simultaneously, it is deepening its roots in Europe with a new Paris headquarters and investing billions in its home market of the UK while pursuing a full banking license.

This global footprint, however, presents a monumental challenge. Each jurisdiction operates a unique and fluid regulatory regime. A fintech must navigate Europe's stringent GDPR data privacy laws, Latin America's distinct banking license requirements, and the specific AML/KYC standards of each APAC nation. In the past, this meant building and maintaining bespoke, siloed compliance systems for each country—a costly, inefficient, and error-prone process that acts as a powerful brake on expansion.

This is the problem Nasdaq's AxiomSL platform is designed to solve. As a centralized, cloud-based system, it ingests data from across Revolut's entire operation and harmonizes it for reporting across multiple jurisdictions. The strategic value was articulated by Murray Laister, Revolut's Head of Group Regulatory Reporting, who noted, “Our partnership with Nasdaq offers the flexibility, transparency and control to meet regulatory expectations across jurisdictions - without slowing down innovation and growth.” This statement gets to the heart of the matter: the goal is to make compliance a seamless, background process, not a constant, front-of-mind obstacle.

Beyond the Exchange: Nasdaq's Infrastructure Play

The partnership is equally significant for what it says about Nasdaq. Long synonymous with its iconic stock exchange, the company has been executing a deliberate, multi-year strategy to reposition itself as a foundational technology provider for the entire financial ecosystem. This move proves that its target market is not just the incumbent giants of Wall Street, but also the digital-native disruptors poised to become the giants of tomorrow.

Nasdaq's Financial Technology division is built on delivering mission-critical capabilities across what it terms liquidity, transparency, and integrity. While its exchange technology powers over 130 markets globally (liquidity), its offerings in the integrity space are becoming a major growth engine. This includes not only regulatory reporting via AxiomSL but also sophisticated trade surveillance technologies and financial crime detection platforms like Verafin, which uses AI to combat money laundering.

By providing the core infrastructure for risk management and compliance, Nasdaq is embedding itself deeply into the operational fabric of its clients. The deal with Revolut showcases this strategy in action. “Revolut is at the forefront of digital banking transformation, and we’re excited to support their journey,” commented Ed Probst, Nasdaq's Head of Regulatory Technology. This is more than corporate pleasantry; it signals Nasdaq’s intent to be the trusted partner for the next generation of financial services, ensuring that as firms like Revolut scale, they do so on Nasdaq's rails.

The Cloud-Managed Imperative

A crucial element of this partnership is the delivery model. Nasdaq AxiomSL is not a piece of software that Revolut’s engineers must install and maintain. It is a fully managed service running in the cloud. This means Nasdaq's own team of experts is responsible for managing the infrastructure, performing maintenance, and, most importantly, continuously updating the platform to reflect the latest regulatory changes from central banks and governing bodies around the world.

This model is rapidly becoming the new industry standard, and for good reason. It transforms a significant capital expenditure and operational burden into a predictable operating expense. More importantly, it outsources the monumental task of regulatory interpretation and implementation. For a company like Revolut, this allows its internal teams to focus on product development and customer acquisition rather than deciphering the latest reporting mandates from the Basel Committee or a newly entered market's central bank.

This shift to the cloud addresses the core needs of a modern financial entity: agility and scalability. As Revolut enters a new country, it can theoretically