Revolut lines up Amex-level US card rewards behind a regulatory approval it still needs

Storonsky's order of operations puts the expensive product in the middle of the queue. In the sequence he described ^[4], credit cards are the second of three stages that follow US approval ^[13]. Rewards on par with JPMorgan's and American Express's ^[1] are money paid to cardholders. The published account of the interview does not include a cost, a launch date or a list of which benefits would be matched.

Storonsky says the partner-bank business is already profitable ^[5]. That business cannot yet offer the full product ^[3]. A card book built to match Amex is a separate cost line. Or rather, it is the cost line the current profit has never had to carry.

If approval is slow, nothing Revolut does in cards reaches the incumbents' economics until the queue clears. If approval comes quickly and Revolut pays up for the customers it names, younger and more affluent consumers, expats and travelers ^[6], the first margin to shrink is Revolut's own. A third version costs less. "On par" could turn out to mean a handful of headline benefits matched and the rest left out, and the interview's wording allows for that.

The only date in the interview belongs to another product. Revolut expects to start testing AI shopping agents in December, in the UK first ^[10]. Those agents would browse sites such as Amazon while Revolut keeps the customer's card details inside its own systems ^[12].

Speaking to Bloomberg in Turin ^[11], Storonsky was asked whether the US push was about winning market share or raising Revolut's profile ahead of a potential IPO ^[8]. "Everywhere we want to go, we want to dominate. Otherwise, what's the point?" he said ^[7]. The US is his named primary venue for any listing ^[9]. For now, I think the rewards pledge matters more to that listing than to anyone's card margins, because it commits to future spending with no date and no price. Storonsky's own answer is the counter-case: the money gets spent and the goal is share. A US rewards schedule that matches Amex and JPMorgan point for point, paid for on Revolut's own books, would prove me wrong.