Banks

As CBDCs struggle with low adoption, the Caribbean is pivoting to instant payment systems to boost trade and financial integration.

This article appears in the October issue of Global Finance Magazine.

The Caribbean was at the vanguard of adopting central bank digital currencies with the Bahamas’ SandDollar, one of the world’s earliest retail pilots in 2020. A year later, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank followed suit with its DCash.

With take-up rates low, DCash has since been discontinued as central banks pivot to instant payment systems. The aim is to provide a resilient and flexible system in an area prone to natural disasters and reliant on tourism and remittances as economic drivers.

“These central bank digital currencies had quite poor uptakes. They never really took off,” said Caribbean economist Dalano DaSouza. “Barbados went the route of doing a fast payment system [BiMPay launched on June 12] and the ECCB is embarking on the same journey because they believe that’s where the transformation lies in terms of digital payments.”

The fact that DCash had an outage in 2022 that stopped new transactions for two months did not help consumer confidence and the project was discontinued in February. Jamaica’s Jam-Dex gave the first 100,000 users who signed up a J$2,500 bonus ($15.69), which accounted for about 0.09% of currency in circulation. The 310,443 registered users represent approximately 11% of Jamaica’s population. 

“The lessons learned are that full integration with the banking system is vital. A fast payment system will still be sending and accepting digital payments, but it will be done from the client’s bank account,” DaSouza said. 

WiPay, Lynk and Trinidad and Tobago adopting India’s UIP interface shows a region keen on integrating and expanding its trade opportunities. This includes the possibility of being incorporated into the African Continental Free Trade Area. This would be accomplished via the Caribbean Community’s CAPSS payment system, which is itself based on Africa’s Pan African Payment System platform.

A pilot scheme to harness the Caribbean and African payment systems is underway, involving Barbados, ECCB and the Trinidad and Tobago central banks. The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank has been at the forefront of moves to bring the two regions together. The idea that Caribbean countries can join AfCFTA opens a market of 54 countries with 1.3 to 1.4 billion consumers with a combined GDP of approximately $3.4 trillion. 

“Potentially, by using the system to make an instant payment from the Caribbean to a vendor in Africa, you would be bypassing correspondent banks, and you would be bypassing the U.S. and their banks,” DaSouza said.

This removes a barrier to African integration, which is the current issue in the history of payments and having to use correspondent banks in the U.S., England, or Europe.

Digital trade and paperless trade systems reached 73% implementation in 2025, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. 

With the Caribbean piloting the next stage of instant payments, the hope is that this can lead to greater business opportunities, not just regionally but globally. CBDCs arguably started the digitalization of the Caribbean financial system, but now it seems time for instant payments.

“Digital payments will be critical to opening new markets and streamlining old ones,” DaSouza said.

Nic Wirtz is a contributing writer based in Guatemala.

Revolut US CEO Cetin Duransoy reveals plans to target globally minded and “underbanked” Americans as it builds toward becoming a primary bank.

After receiving conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank charter, Revolut Technologies Inc. appears ready to launch a full-scale challenge to traditional banks and fintechs in the United States.

After relatively quick growth in France, Spain, and Italy, Revolut aims to bring its superapp model to the U.S., where it doesn’t exist in quite the same form.

Revolut’s U.S. CEO, Cetin Duransoy, who has held senior roles at Raisin, Fundbox, Visa, and Capital One, spoke with Global Finance about Revolut’s plans for the American market. 

Global Finance: In the US, banks, fintechs, brokerages, travel products and payment apps are mostly separate. Does that surprise you? Do you see a genuine hole in the U.S. market for a company that combines all those relationships in one place?

Duransoy: It’s not surprising, given how complex these products are and how crowded and fragmented the U.S. market is. Layer on the regulatory process, and combining all these product suites—banking, brokerage, FX, crypto, travel, and more—into a single company or app becomes genuinely difficult and, for most companies, not worth the effort.

We believe you need a genuinely differentiated product to succeed in this market, and we have identified an opportunity here. By bringing all these products into one platform, we can remove the friction customers typically experience when cobbling together services from multiple providers.

GF: People often say, “The U.S. banking market is different.” Different how, exactly? And how might those differences affect Revolut?

Duransoy: The US’s fragmented, charter-based regulation can be more cumbersome than the EU’s passporting model, and U.S. customers tend to rely more on credit than their European counterparts. But the U.S. provides certain advantages, including the U.S. card network and interchange system, which subsidize rewards; FDIC insurance; and consumer-protection laws, which create a trust threshold.

Our broad product offering, 80-million-user global network, and strong global brand allow U.S. to cater to the distinct challenges of the U.S. market and understand the challenges of U.S. distribution costs. By obtaining a national bank charter, we will be on par with traditional banks, with direct Fedwire/ACH access and lending capability.

GF: When Revolut enters the U.S. market more aggressively, should Americans expect something close to the European Revolut experience—or will the U.S. product necessarily look much more like a traditional American bank competing on deposits, credit cards and lending?

Duransoy: We are always focused on product-market fit for our customers, and the U.S. will be no different. We’ve publicly shared that we will bring the best of what Revolut offers and provide the products U.S. customers want most, including checking accounts, credit cards, installment loans, FX, and stablecoins. We’ll continue innovating to deliver a distinct, more productive experience for U.S. customers.

GF: One of the things that makes Revolut unusual in Europe is that it sits at the intersection of finance, travel and lifestyle. Is that model central to how you think about the US, or is America more of a banking opportunity?

Duransoy: Yes. Combining our lifestyle products with the financial services that have made Revolut so popular remains central to our thinking. And they’re a key differentiator in many of our markets. We expect these offerings to help make us a top-of-wallet card and strengthen customer retention.

GF: Why should someone with Chase, Amex, Venmo, Robinhood, and a good travel card move meaningful parts of their financial life to Revolut? What can you offer that those companies, individually or collectively, do not?

Duransoy: We recognize that inertia is a strong force when it comes to financial services and that a customer’s bank holds critical parts of their financial life, such as their mortgage or direct deposit.

What we offer is the ability to consolidate multiple products and services into a single interface and remove the friction our customers find frustrating with other services. Revolut’s broad-based platform allows customers to seamlessly access multi-currency spending without foreign transaction fees, instant global P2P, a combined debit/credit product, budgeting, digital assets, and investing, all without transferring funds between platforms or managing multiple accounts. That’s especially valuable for people who travel internationally, have cross-border family ties, or are underserved by traditional credit underwriting.

GF: Which types of lending will Revolut prioritize in the US?

Duransoy: We intend to initially prioritize unsecured and secured credit cards and installment loans.

GF: What does Revolut understand about the consumer relationship that you think many American banks and fintechs still lack?

Duransoy: We treat our global app as the product. We iterate quickly, aim for gamified engagement, and offer frequent feature releases, in contrast to most U.S. bank apps, which have slower release cycles.

We also build for financial lives that span borders and currencies, rather than assuming a single-currency, single-country customer. American banks were largely built for a domestic customer, and that assumption is increasingly out of step with a more mobile, globally connected population.

GF: Do you think Revolut is underestimated in the US? If so, why? Among those who are aware, what do people in the U.S. most commonly misunderstand about Revolut right now?

Duransoy: “Underestimated” is probably right now, largely because our independent U.S. bank doesn’t exist yet. So we’re still seen as a “European neobank” by most Americans. That undersells what we’ll be once we have a full national charter, FDIC insurance, and our full lending capabilities live.

The most common misunderstanding among those who do know the brand is that we’re simply a fintech or a travel debit card, rather than a company with an 80-million-user global base—including 1.4M in the US—and banking licenses now spanning the UK, France, Australia, Mexico, and more.

GF: Are you coming to the U.S. to compete for a small slice of the market, or do you ultimately believe Revolut can change what Americans expect from a bank?

Duransoy: In the US, our near-term goal is to compete for market share. No new entrant can reshape what an entire country expects from a bank on day one. That takes years of trust-building, especially post-charter, when FDIC insurance and regulatory scrutiny are new territory for us.

What we’re looking to do is win the demographics best suited to us, namely the internationally minded, underbanked-by-incumbents, and digitally native users.

GF: On the corporate side, what are Revolut’s corporate banking plans?

Duransoy: Revolut Business exists—and is a core focus for us—in the U.S. We expect this to continue and are excited to launch merchant acquiring within the first years of becoming a bank.

GF: If we revisit this in three years, what would need to be true for you to say that Revolut has successfully become a major U.S. bank?

Duransoy: Within three years, we expect to be a fully operating bank with real momentum. We won’t share specific customer or product numbers today, but we’re building for scale and a sizable U.S. customer base that treats us as their primary bank, not a secondary account. That’s the bar we’re setting for ourselves.

Lighter regulation and excess capital are setting up the biggest U.S. banking wave since the 2008 crisis.

The U.S. banking industry is bracing for its most significant wave of consolidation since the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new Bain & Co. analysis.

The firm expects the number of trillion-dollar U.S. banks to grow from the “Big Four” — JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co. — to as many as seven by 2030. Key drivers include lighter regulation, burgeoning tech and 17 global banks holding over $10 billion each in excess capital. That capital cushion, Bain argues, will lead to a spike in M&A activity.

Banco Santander SA’s August acquisition of Webster Financial Corp. serves as an early example of what could be in store for U.S. banking giants. For Joe Lischwe, a partner in Bain’s financial services and customer strategy practice, the deal illustrates how capital-rich banks are leveraging eased regulatory conditions to combine geographic scale with targeted scope. In this scenario, Santander gets Webster’s health savings account franchise.

“We think there’s a window within this current [Trump] administration over the next two to three years where this will continue to be accelerating,” Lischwe told Global Finance on a call. “You will see more consolidation over the next few years.”

A Capital-Rich Setup

Seventeen U.S. banks currently hold more than $10 billion in excess capital — a figure Lischwe said Bain compiled from a mix of public quarterly filings and third-party data sources, including Refinitiv.

Bain also found that total bank M&A deal value rose 19% in 2025 and is up another 7% so far this year.

“There’s been an uptick in the actual deal value that has been occurring,” Lischwe added. “But I think, probably, the biggest tailwind is from a regulatory perspective.”

The Trump administration continues to move on multiple fronts that matter most to M&A-hungry banks, the latest being on Sept. 17 when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) proposed new guidelines to make bank mergers easier and faster to approve.

Scale vs. Scope

Not all acquisitions are created equal, according to Bain’s framework, which sorts bank deals into two categories. “Scale” deals expand a bank’s existing footprint — deposits, branches and geographic reach — and generate value primarily through cost synergies.

“Scope” deals, meanwhile, bring in capabilities the acquirer doesn’t already have. Bain predicts that these blended scale-and-scope deals will emerge as the standouts. Capital One Financial Corp.’s acquisition of Discover, which gave Capital One a payments network it previously lacked, produced outsized total shareholder returns on a two-year basis, Lischwe said.

Fifth Third Bancorp’s purchase of Comerica, by contrast, was a more traditional scale play — consolidating similar deposit and branch businesses — without adding new capabilities.

“In general, we were seeing that blended deals, on average, performed better,” Lischwe said. “That’s not to say that scale deals don’t do well.”

The Fintech Integration Trap

Bain’s advice to bank executives is to first conduct a rigorous self-assessment across six dimensions — financial scale, geographic density, business mix, product capability, technology and liquidity — before approaching an acquisition target.

“The answer is not to buy more fintechs,” Lischwe said. “The answer is to know your gaps, diligence those gaps, and then consider every asset that helps you close those gaps.”

Nowadays, fintechs tend to outpace incumbent banks in artificial intelligence, data, payments, blockchain and digital assets — areas that could tempt banks to leapfrog years of in-house development. But evaluating those targets is harder than buying a similar-sized bank, Lischwe said. A fintech operating in an unfamiliar capability area is more difficult to underwrite than a competitor running the same core business.

That complexity introduces significant execution risk for buyers looking to acquire growth quickly.

Winners, Losers, and the Case for Consumers

Jeff Barrington, Managing Director at tech and payments sell-side advisory firm Windsor Drake, cautions that banks frequently misjudge these acquisitions on several fronts.

“Banks buying fintechs tend to get tripped up in four ways: they pay a growth multiple for revenue that was acquisition cost-fuelled and doesn’t survive inside the bank, they underestimate the cost of bolting a modern stack onto a legacy core, they lose the founders and engineers once the earnout vests, and they misprice the regulatory and partner bank risk that comes attached,” Barrington said. “The recurring error is buying what looks like a growth company and ending up with a bank-owned product that stops growing.”

There’s also the risk of a more concentrated banking landscape: fewer banks means higher fees and diminished access to the kind of relationship-based banking that small towns and entrepreneurs rely on.

Barrington added that while scale can fund improved pricing and technology for users, “consolidation consistently narrows choice, closes branches and thins out relationship lending.

Yes, but …

Banks that fail to acquire or build the AI, data and digital capabilities that are currently reshaping the industry risk falling behind competitively.

“Those [banks] that will be successful are those that will be really ruthless about what are our capability gaps, what can we close inorganically, doing the proper diligence and then properly integrating it,” Lischwe added.

Capital One-Discover, Fifth Third-Comerica and Santander-Webster are recent deals that, so far, have held up. Whether pricier, more speculative targets — he cited digital banking upstart Revolut as an example of an asset banks are watching, despite its rich valuation — get bought will depend on whether acquirers can underwrite a clear strategic fit and value-creation case.

As for whether a change in political control in Washington could derail the trend, Lischwe remains skeptical.

“The regulatory tailwind is going to last,” he said, “through this administration and even into the next one.”

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com