This is exactly what I thought, when I saw the headline…
Griffin got its license roughly a year after starting the application process, in marked contrast to U.K.’s most valuable fintech Revolut, which has yet to secure a banking license despite repeatedly stating its intentions over a span of three years.
TLDR: Griffin are not trying to become a bank in their own right though.
To be honest I don’t think Revolut is comparable to any other Fintech applying for a banking licence.
Namely in that it started as e-money and grew massively. That means a lot. It must be difficult to build expecting a level of scrutiny and then have to sort out all of these things you didn’t expect to be an issue later.
Didn’t Monzo do exactly that too? The original Mondo product was a prepaid debit card IIRC.
Monzo isn’t very big compared to Revolut nor as valuable and wasn’t as concentrated under a single shareholder with preferential shares (unlike Revolut)