Daily News

Revolut and Monzo Go After UK Small Businesses

The Battle for Britain’s Small Businesses

Hey Digital Banking Fanatic!

We've already seen Revolut launch personal loans and Monzo open its doors in Spain. Now both are going after a group the big banks have long had to themselves: small businesses.

Bloomberg reports that Britain's digital banks are competing for the country's youngest businesses, just as the government puts startups at the centre of its plans.

In the Budget on 28 October, Chancellor John Healey announced a 10% capital gains rate for founders on up to £10 million of lifetime gains and around £5 billion of extra capital for the British Business Bank. At the same time, he doubled the surcharge on bank profits from 3% to 6% for 15 months.

The challengers already have real scale here. Monzo passed 1 million business customers in July, around one in six UK businesses, and was the most switched-to business account last year. Revolut ended 2025 with 767,000 business customers.

What I find interesting is that the battle is moving beyond the account itself. Revolut has just started lending to consumers, and if business credit follows, the big four could start to feel it where it matters most.

Here’s what else is happening in digital banking today👇

See you tomorrow!

Cheers,

Marcel

INSIGHTS

💡 Incognia: How Fraud Farms Run Thousands of Accounts at Scale. In the second episode of The Fraud Economy, payments strategist Dwayne Gefferie speaks with Incognia CEO André Ferraz about how organised fraud operations use device farms, app cloners, mule accounts and AI to manage thousands of accounts. One case uncovered by Incognia involved roughly 160–170 devices operating more than 7,000 accounts from a single apartment. The discussion explores why analysing accounts individually often fails to reveal coordinated fraud, how fraudsters rent device infrastructure like cloud services, and how physical-world signals can expose the networks behind suspicious activity. Watch the full episode here

How Fraud Farms Run Thousands of Accounts at Scale

NEWS

🇬🇧 Revolut and Monzo target UK small businesses in challenge to the big banks. Bloomberg reports that the digital banks are competing for the UK's youngest businesses as the new chancellor introduces measures to support startups and small firms. Monzo had more than 905,000 business customers as of June.

🇧🇷 Nubank refreshes its brand with design studio Koto. The update introduces NuSans, its first proprietary typeface, alongside a new colour system. The refreshed visual identity builds on the existing logo and wordmark, which remain unchanged. Nubank serves more than 140M customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

🇧🇷 Nubank grants David Vélez a $200M stock award vesting through 2036. The one-time award of about 13.6M restricted Class A shares replaces Vélez's annual equity grants for 2027–2031, according to a report citing an SEC filing. Vesting depends on his continued service.

🇰🇷 MoonPay, NH NongHyup Bank and Finger sign MoU on digital asset payments. The partners will develop a model for overseas remittances, corporate payments and settlement, linking MoonPay's global network with Korea's domestic financial system. A proof of concept comes first.

🇮🇹 BBVA adds Gigs-powered eSIM data plans to its Italian banking app. Customers with a BBVA online current account can buy and activate travel data plans for their destination, then track usage and top up in the app. BBVA may extend the service to other markets.

🇬🇧 Revolut hires Nilesh Khatwani to lead institutional crypto sales. The former Crypto.com sales leader, based in Dubai, joins as Global Head of Institutional Sales – Crypto to build out institutional crypto and expand Revolut's crypto services beyond the UK.

🇺🇸 TexasBank agrees to acquire Haskell National Bank. Haskell National Bank will merge into TexasBank, which holds $2.5B in assets. The combined bank plans to expand treasury management and digital banking for customers.