Revolut Wins Gibraltar DLT Licence via New Subsidiary

Gibraltar’s financial regulator has licensed a new Revolut subsidiary to run crypto trading, custody and staking services for markets outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area.

The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) issued the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Provider licence to Revolut Global Digital Assets Limited (RGDAL), a company Revolut set up to carry its crypto business into new jurisdictions. Revolut announced the licence on Monday, October 19, and a company spokesperson said it opens additional international markets, with the first markets and launch dates still to be picked.

The Gibraltar government said in its statement that RGDAL may now place orders for virtual assets on customers’ behalf, hold those assets in custody and pay staking rewards.

Gibraltar becomes Revolut’s third crypto regulatory base. Revolut Ltd serves UK customers, and Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd covers 30 EEA countries, about 450 million people, under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) through a licence issued in Cyprus.

Revolut puts its retail base at more than 80 million customers, and says roughly 16 million of them use its crypto services.

Emil Urmanshin, Revolut’s general manager for crypto, called Gibraltar “an ideal jurisdiction to support our global operational framework.”

A licensing run beyond Europe

The Gibraltar licence lands in a busy stretch. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority gave Revolut in-principle approval for crypto services in July, and in September US regulators granted conditional preliminary approval for a national trust bank charter covering digital asset custody and crypto payments. In May the company hired Michael Schroeder, who ran risk for Coinbase in Europe, as its global head of crypto expansion.

Gibraltar courts crypto business

Trade and Industry Minister Nigel Feetham called the licence “an important development for Gibraltar’s virtual asset sector.” The government said Revolut resumed signing up Gibraltar residents to its payments app in full after talks between the company, Feetham and the GFSC; the statement gave no reason for the earlier stop.

Gibraltar reportedly has promoted its digital asset licensing regime more actively as higher UK gambling taxes weigh on its remote gaming industry. The government said it expects to grant three more DLT permissions this week.