2021 seems to be a year full of plans for the UK-based financial technology company Revolut. The fintech is building its foundation for expanding its service into India. It has hired an ex-Airtel exec as its CEO and also sparked a recruitment drive for hiring a staff of 300 to serve its business operations. 

There’s more that Revolut is planning on. Recently, Revolut also announced its plans of allowing its customers to transfer their Bitcoin holdings to outside the ecosystem of the app in the near future. In the coming time, it will also be adding many more tokens and plans to offer currency exchange with zero hidden charges. This will also include cryptocurrencies and gold.

The accidental announcement

The announcement about the Bitcoin withdrawal feature and addition of more tokens was accidentally posted prior than planned. However, the company was able to take the announcement post down quickly after posting it.

In an email to Forbes, a Revolut spokesperson confirmed the announcement stating they’re launching next Thursday (this week). However, unfortunately, the blog went up a little too soon,” the email read. 

Moreover, the spokesperson admitted that it was a scheduling error that posted the announcement much sooner than it was supposed to. 

The fintech will start offering Bitcoin withdrawals this week onwards and will keep adding more tokens as well as upgrades in the future, said the spokesperson. 

At present, Revolut’s mobile app allows its users to buy and sell about 22 different types of cryptocurrencies. As BTC withdrawals are not available yet on Robinhood and PayPal, it will definitely give Revolut first-movers advantage. 

With this step, Revolut will become one of the cryptocurrency apps that now offer bitcoin withdrawals. Currently, PayPal and Robinhood both do not allow crypto withdrawals.

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Revolut’s expansion into India

Revolut’s India launch is the most recent move in its global expansion plans, after successful roll outs in Australia and Singapore in 2019 and Japan and the United States in 2020. 

The fintech firm has appointed Paroma Chatterjee as its CEO in India. Chatterjee has previously worked at Airtel Money, Via.com, Flipkart and Lendingkart. 

Chatterjee will be responsible for building and leading Revolut’s subsidiary in India. She will also define and execute fintech’s business strategy, hire the right people team and manage licence applications along with “any potential acquisitions” in the market. 

The company has already recruited Heads of Operations and Legal for India and is using the country’s talent pool to recruit across multiple functions including finance, HR, marketing, recruitment, risk, compliance and technology. 

With a population of over 1.3 billion people and accelerating acceptance of digital payments, India will be a great market for Revolut, where it will compete with Paytm which is backed by SoftBank and is used by many Indians for making payments by scanning QR codes. 

Revolut CEO and Founder, Nik Storonsky says that India is a core market in its expansion strategy with a massive supply of talent, and they’re excited to tap into that strong talent pool to help Revolut go from strength to strength.

The fintech company has also talked about its plans to set shop in multiple markets across South America and strengthen its existing presence in Asia-Pacific.

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