Revolut is preparing another secondary share sale in the second half of 2026 that could push its valuation above $100 billion — and the more telling signal is what it is not doing: rushing to an initial public offering (IPO). The UK neobank is becoming the clearest example of a strategy now defining the fintech elite: use serial employee secondaries to reset valuation and hand staff liquidity, while keeping the IPO at arm’s length.

That pattern is not unique to Revolut. Stripe ran an employee tender at a $159 billion valuation in February 2026, and open-banking infrastructure provider Plaid completed one at $8 billion — both side-stepping public markets in favour of private transactions. The secondary, not the listing, is becoming the primary liquidity event for the largest privately held fintechs, and Revolut is now executing that playbook more deliberately than anyone.

What Revolut is planning

Bloomberg and Axios report Revolut is weighing a fresh secondary share sale in the second half of 2026 that could value the company above $100 billion. That would extend a steep climb: its November 2025 secondary set the valuation at $75 billion, a 67% jump on the prior round. Co-founder and Chief Executive Nik Storonsky has indicated the company runs such transactions every one to two years, treating them as scheduled liquidity windows rather than one-off events. People familiar with the company’s thinking told Bloomberg the eventual IPO target is at least $150 billion, with figures up to $200 billion floated.

Why the IPO keeps slipping

Storonsky said in April 2026 that a listing is “two years away,” edging the timeline toward 2028 and tightening his December 2025 guidance of two-to-three years. His stated reasoning is about trust rather than market timing. “We’re a bank, and for a bank, it’s super important to have trust. Public companies are trusted more compared to private companies,” said Nik Storonsky, co-founder and Chief Executive of Revolut. The eventual listing is expected to favour a US venue over London.

The cautionary tale peers are watching

The case for patience is written in recent fintech IPOs. Chime, which went public in 2025, has traded near or below its first-day close, a reminder that a listing can cap rather than crown a valuation. That backdrop strengthens the argument for staying private: a secondary lets Revolut mark its book higher on its own schedule without exposing the stock to public-market repricing. The same calculus is visible across the sector, from lending-and-deposits players like Klarna, which posted $1 billion in Q1 revenue, to charter-seeking challengers such as Mercury, which raised $200 million at $5.2 billion alongside an OCC national-bank charter.

What it means for the sector

For employees and early backers, serial secondaries solve the liquidity problem that once forced startups public; for the company, they preserve control and shield the valuation from quarterly scrutiny. The risk is that a perpetual-private posture can defer the discipline public markets impose — and that a $100 billion-plus private mark becomes harder to defend if growth slows before any listing. Revolut’s expansion gives it cover for now: the same cross-border ambition driving rivals, including Bunq’s push for a Mexican banking licence, underpins Revolut’s case that the franchise is still compounding. The question is whether a bank that prizes the trust of being public can keep postponing the moment it actually becomes so.

What happens next

Watch the second-half secondary. If it clears above $100 billion, it confirms the valuation staircase is intact and pushes the eventual IPO conversation toward the $150 billion floor. If demand softens, it would be the first crack in the private-staircase thesis and could force the listing timeline forward rather than back. Either way, the next data point on Europe’s most valuable fintech will come from a private tender, not a stock exchange — and that, more than any single valuation, is the story of how the fintech elite now manages itself.

Rick Steves

Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has experience producing real-time news, from both buy-side and sell-side, as well as for retail traders, brokers and service providers. Steves' work has appeared in a variety of online publications including FX Street, NewsBTC, FinanceFeeds, and The Industry Spread. Rick has great interest in the dynamics of the trading industry. The never-ending clash between technology, economics, regulation, and more importantly, the people.