Baxby’s comment comes amid Revolut’s securing of an Australian banking licence, its first in the Asia Pacific. The development, that took place in July, made the fintech giant the latest in a string of so-called neobanks seeking to challenge the dominance of the Trans-Tasmanian country’s major lenders.

The four major lenders control at least 70% of the banking market, including mortgages and deposits, while Macquarie has made a rapid push into home lending, where it is now the fifth largest.

“It’s almost a natural progression that you move into more of those relationship-based (mortgage) products. That’s a massive pool in Australia and also pretty heavily contested. All the Big Four have their cannons pointed at the mortgage market,” Baxby said during an interaction with Reuters.

The senior official also backed Revolut to succeed in the Australian market, as it had 1.2 million existing customers before its banking licence was ⁠approved in the Trans-Tasman country, who used the platform for international payments and foreign exchange services. Since July, Revolut has started offering savings accounts and credit cards as well.

Revolut, in Australia, operates a subscription-based banking model in which customers choose from four plans ranging in price from AUSD 5.99 per month to AUSD 99.99 a month. The paid plans, which are uncommon in the country, come with tiered retail and business savings rates and reduced fees, among other benefits.

Revolut Australia, in 2025, recorded AUSD 70.8 million (USD 50.32 million) in revenue, up 74% from the prior year. The net profit reached AUSD 7.4 million, while net interest income stood at AUSD 17.1 million, reflecting a 110% year-on-year increase.

Revolut, the ultimate success story of the British and European fintech sector, has expanded into 40 countries since its inception in 2015. It is also set to launch in India, a strategic expansion that will help the business to reach 100 million customers by mid-2027.

Revolut recently launched a secondary share sale with a target valuation of around USD 115 billion, which would make it more valuable than European banking stalwarts like Barclays and Societe Generale.

However, Revolut is likely to face challenges in Australia, as neobanks don’t tend to fare well against their legacy, established counterparts. Two such ventures, Xinja and Volt, got closed in 2020 and 2022, after failing to gain scale against Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ⁠National Australia Bank and ANZ.

In Xinja’s case, the bank, in the lead-up to its closure, was offering high deposit rates to gain customers. However, the neobank failed to launch lending products quickly enough to offset the high costs it incurred.

Joshua Koh, a partner at consultancy firm Simon-Kucher, said Australian banking customers had proven reluctant in the past to move away from a major bank.

“People use neobanks for very specific reasons, typically ⁠the high interest rate that they offer,” he said, adding the “Big Four” banks would continue to attract customers for their transaction banking capabilities.

Baxby, while countering the analysts’ concerns, stated that fintech is already profitable in Australia on the basis of lucrative revenue sources like foreign currency transactions and interchange fees, which are payments made by merchants’ payment providers to customers’ ⁠card-issuing banks whenever a card transaction occurs.

“We use a lot of the services the Revolut group provides as part of that. And I think, as a startup bank trying to build those things from scratch, it’s just a really tough gig. So it puts us in a favourable position to compete with the major banks,” the senior official concluded.

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