The Distillery: Revolut Allowed to Form a National Bank in America and Vodafone's SuperMobile

September 2026

Fintech & Payments

Juniper Research

Analyst House

In this edition:

• Revolut receives conditional approval: US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has permitted Revolut to form a National Bank
  
• Vodafone and Three merger: VodafoneThree announces the launch of its new 5G+ Service
  
• Free Webinar: Join the webinar on payment fragmentation, by Juniper Research and Thunes
  
• AI commerce agents: Anthropic collaborates with Visa & Mastercard to help merchants and shoppers integrate AI
  
  

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

Revolut Receives Conditional Approval from US OCC to Form a National Bank

Revolut has received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to form a national bank in the US.

While this does not immediately clear Revolut to operate in the US, the company expects approval to follow from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Federal Reserve, with the bank on track to launch in the US in 2027.

The announcement follows several regulatory victories for Revolut this year, with Revolut receiving approval for a full UK banking licence in March 2026, and a French banking licence in August 2026. 

Distilled…

🟣 Revolut pursuing a truly global strategy: Revolut is scaling in an impressive way, with support for accounts throughout the UK and Europe, the US, Australia, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore. This represents an increasing ambition to be a global bank. A global strategy has major advantages, with Revolut able to provide much easier cross-border payments; for example, it has a presence in major markets. 

🟣 Global strategy must not come at expense of local tailoring: While global scale is a major positive, it cannot come at the expense of what locals want. Ensuring that the product market fit is tailored for local appetites is vital to success in a highly congested digital banking market.

🟣 Additional products can help to monetise increased scale: As Revolut continues to scale up, it will increasingly roll out new products to help it monetise its growing customer base. This will likely prioritise high margin products, such as rewards credit cards, or finance. We also expect Revolut to double down on its remittance capabilities, which will become more powerful as it obtains new licences, as well as non-financial products, such as mobile phone connectivity plans. 

MORE FINTECH INSIGHTS

🏦 Starling Assistant Is Customised ~ Is this the Future of Money Management? [Blog] 

📠 POS Transactions to Reach $41 Trillion Globally by 2031, as Convergence Towards Unified Commerce Surges [Research]

📲 How Omnichannel Payment Platforms Are Streamlining Merchant Operations [Whitepaper]

TELECOMMUNICATIONS & CONNECTIVITY

VodafoneThree Launches New 5G+ Service, SuperMobile 

The merger of Vodafone and Three, VodafoneThree, launched its first service offering dubbed Vodafone SuperMobile. Vodafone SuperMobile utilises 5G+, or 5G Standalone (5G SA), to give both consumers and business customers faster download speeds and extra network reliability.

The new service offers users download speeds of up to four times faster than Vodafone’s standard plans, while guaranteeing minimum download speeds of 15mbps. The guarantee is backed up by giving users the ability to leave their contract without an exit fee. Additionally, the service includes Secure Net Mobile; a security solution that offers several additional protection offerings to users at no additional costs. These include protection against malware and viruses, identity protection, scam call protection, and network-level parental controls. 

Vodafone SuperMobile became available to consumers and business users on September 3, 2026, with the latter being able to tailor packages and performance commitments to meet their needs. The service is available to all pay monthly customers across both SIM-only and handsets, for £3 per month more than Vodafone full-speed Xtra plans, £8 more on SIM-only 100Mbps plans, £4 more on handset 100Mbps plans, or £12 as a rolling monthly add-on. Vodafone SuperMobile is also available to small businesses with one to nine employees with the Vodafone SuperMobile plan for Business.

Distilled…

🟣 Vodafone SuperMobile provides customers access to Vodafone’s new 5G SA FastTrack; offering download and streaming speeds that are four times faster than standard plans in busy areas.

🟣 SuperMobile offers customers increased reliability by guaranteeing minimum download speeds of 15Mbps when customers are in 5G+ coverage. Moreover, customers can leave SuperMobile with no exit fee if they do not achieve the guaranteed speed.

🟣 The service also provides advanced security with Secure Net Mobile at no additional cost to customers. Secure Net Mobile delivers protection against threats such as malware and phishing, and scam websites. Additionally, customers benefit from 24/7 ID monitoring and AI-powered scam call protection.

MORE TELECOMS INSIGHTS

📱 The Foldable iPhone Will Be Niche, Very Niche [Blog] 

🤖 Beyond the Headlines: What the 'AI Bubble' Really Means [Whitepaper]

📡 Direct to Cell: Monthly Active Users to Reach Over 130 Million by 2031, But Usage Forecast to Be Lower Than Anticipated [Research] 

FREE WEBINAR

Quantifying Global Payments Fragmentation with Juniper Research and Thunes

Payment fragmentation is worse than ever. It is no longer just a technical issue, as it creates a real impact on people and businesses. The webinar, by Juniper Research and Thunes, to be held on Tuesday, 22nd September 2026 at 3pm BST, focuses on measuring that impact and identifying what we can do about it.

The webinar will uncover:

• Why domestic payments innovation often stops at the border
• How this leaves over a billion people waiting days for international funds
• Insights from Thunes’ Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, based on 6,763 consumers across 10 major markets and five key dimensions
• How efficient domestic payments still face significant cross-border friction, revealing a two-speed global payments system

REGISTER NOW

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

Anthropic Partners with Visa & Mastercard to Launch AI Commerce Agents

Anthropic - the AI company that launched the agent Claude - has released two blueprints with prebuilt code to enable both merchants and shoppers to integrate AI.

The shopping agent includes integration points for the merchant catalogue, cart, and order history. This allows the agent to be able to search through a catalogue, tailor its suggestions to customer preferences, show comparisons within its existing chat conversation, answer customer service questions, and build the cart.

The merchant agent is to support those running a store; analysing sales performance, track inventory and recommended pricing based on sales history. According to Anthropic, a merchant using its blueprint could enable a commerce agent to be up and running on Claude within days.

At the same time, Mastercard admitted 22 companies to the first Agentic Commerce & Services cohort of its Start Path programme, which engages with startups to help them scale. These 22 startups specialise in identifying and verifying agents on the merchant side, as well as providing value-added services such as fraud prevention and auditable workflows. This backing of AI-enabling companies by a major payments company indicates the significant momentum behind agentic commerce in the industry.

Juniper Research forecasts that agentic commerce is set to generate $1.5 trillion by 2030; up from £8 billion today, as agentic trust grows, and top players move quickly to build out the rails necessary to deploy AI agents at scale. The deployment of an AI agent blueprint, backed by giants such as Visa and Mastercard, represents a significant milestone towards reaching this forecast value.

Distilled…

🟣 AI doesn’t touch the payment: Anthropic left payment protocols out of the blueprint; indicating that the merchant will still remain in control of the transaction.

🟣 Customer relationship stays with the merchant: The agent operates within the retailer’s website, which avoids diluting the direct customer relationship.

🟣 The road to profitability: Recent research from Ramp suggests that Anthropic receives 80% of its revenue from 1% of its customers. These new commerce capabilities might inspire growth in new industry verticals; reducing the concentration risk of its business model.

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