Revolut takes on Square with payment terminal for larger businesses

By: Lars Mucklejohn

Banking and Fintech Reporter

Fintech giant Revolut is stepping up its challenge to the likes of Square and SumUp with a new payment terminal for larger businesses and retailers.

The London-based banking firm is set to roll out the device, called Revolut Terminal, in the UK and Ireland ahead of the busy festive season in a push to grow its business-to-business offering.

Revolut’s merchant acquiring arm started launching products in 2021, offering both online and offline payment systems under its Revolut Business brand.

The new terminals will provide merchants access to Revolut Pay, a checkout option allowing the fintech’s more than 45m global users to pay directly from the Revolut app.

Through this method, customers are eligible to earn “RevPoints”, the firm’s loyalty reward scheme. Revolut Pay transactions will in turn offer merchants lower fees of 0.5 per cent plus £0.02.

The terminal can be paired with Revolut’s software to give merchants access to analytics, table mapping, multi-location management and customer catalogues.

Revolut says it has processed payments with more than 65,000 merchants over the last year, during which time the volume of in-person transactions processed has quadrupled.

“This is one of the major new bets that we have as a company,” Alex Codina, general manager of Revolut’s merchant acquiring business, told City AM.

He said that while Revolut’s existing card reader and iPhone tap-to-pay products fit “very nicely with small businesses and freelancers”, the new terminal is “betting on a new segment” of larger SMEs, often with more than one location.

Revolut Business has touted the fact that its payment processing technology achieved 100 per cent platform uptime on Black Friday last year, a period which often sees high demand for payments cause digital outages for retailers.

The firm is aiming to deliver 99.9 per cent uptime for uninterrupted sales via Revolut Terminal, even during the busiest periods.

“The larger the business is, the more important the reliability component is,” Codina said. “So there cannot be a single minute that the merchant is not able to accept payments.”

He added that while Revolut Terminal would directly compete with fellow fintechs Square, Dojo and SumUp, the firm was also looking to hoover up market share from traditional players.

“The in-person payments space is full of legacy infrastructure, full of legacy terminals, and to be honest, this is where we think there is ample space to really build,” Codina said.

“There is no acquirer in Europe that will be able to be in the position to tell the merchant ‘Hey, we can market your goods or services to 45m-plus people,’ which is quite unique.”

Revolut was founded in 2015 as a digital payments and money transfer app in the UK before expanding globally and offering a range of services, from cryptocurrency trading to an eSIM plan.

It booked a record pretax profit of £438m in 2023 and surpassed 10m UK retail customers last month.

Meanwhile, Revolut Business saw global revenues exceed $500m (£380m) this summer and is onboarding more than 20,000 businesses on average per month.

Revolut’s ambitions in its home market received a boost in July when it secured a UK banking licence, subject to temporary restrictions, after more than three years in regulatory limbo.

Revolut Terminal is available for pre-order in the UK from Monday and next month in Ireland. It is being offered at £129 plus VAT until 31 October, down from £169 plus VAT.

Share this article