Revolut Got Its First Bank License in Lithuania. The Country Is Now Trying to Grow the Next One

Roughly 250 fintech companies now operate in Lithuania, a country of fewer than three million people. After the UK voted for Brexit, the Bank of Lithuania made the country the European Union's top jurisdiction for licensed fintechs, and the firms followed the paperwork.

Revolut is the famous one. It chose Lithuania for its first European banking license, a specialised bank permit granted through the Bank of Lithuania in 2018, back when it was a scrappy app rather than the $115 billion company it is now, Europe's most valuable private business after a July 2026 secondary share sale, up from $75 billion eight months earlier. Revolut has since added a full UK banking license, in March 2026, but its first European permit came from Vilnius.

A lot of that started at a co-working space in Vilnius called Rockit. So I went to ask the people who run it how a co-working space ends up attached to Revolut's origin story.

The Glue

The first thing Lina Žemaitytė-Kirkman, the head of Rockit, wanted to correct was the co-working label.

"A lot of people, when they come in here first, think it's a co-working space, which it is, that's what you see. But I try to position, and we try to position ourselves, not as a co-working space, but as a way to grow your startup," Žemaitytė-Kirkman told me. "So co-working space is just one of the elements of growing the startup, but our real activity is actually accelerating."

Rockit is a nonprofit, and how it pays for itself is the thing visitors ask about first. Its sole founder is Swedbank @SWDBY, the largest bank in the Baltics.

"It's a million euro question, literally," Žemaitytė-Kirkman said when I asked who funds it. "We are a non-profit organization, so everything we earn, we put back into the ecosystem, into accelerating startups. Our founder is the local bank, it's called Swedbank, so it's the one and sole founder. And that's the bank's corporate social responsibility, giving to community, giving to Lithuania."

Early-stage founders in its program sit there for free.

"We're always very proud to say that Revolut, when they were very, very young, and they still were in Lithuania, they were actually being hosted here," Žemaitytė-Kirkman said, before rattling off the others: Argyle, a core-banking startup called Paysolut that SumUp later acquired, and Röntgen, a real-estate crowdfunding platform working in the room that day.

I asked what founders actually get out of it. She likes to repeat a line from one company that graduated out.

"I don't need to go anywhere, anyone I need comes here," she said. "Because we're trying to create this ecosystem, and we're doing it. We're trying to create reasons for people to meet."

Why Lithuania

I asked why a fintech would start in Vilnius instead of London or New York. The answer was not really about money.

"I think it's the legacy of, actually, a friendly regulator. It's simple things, and you would take it for granted, but it's not like that everywhere else," she said. "In Europe, for example, if you want, all the language that the Bank of Lithuania will talk to you can be English, and all the documents can be English. And it seems like such a little thing, but if you try to do that in some southern countries, that's not necessarily the case, and it creates a lot of friction."

The country built a specialised bank license and an electronic money institution license, both lighter and faster than a full banking charter. Companies register online. For a UK fintech that lost its EU passport at Brexit, Lithuania was a way back into the single market without moving to Frankfurt.

It has worked well enough to produce a real unicorn class for a small country.

"Our unicorns, those are the success stories," she said. "Vinted, NordVPN, Cast AI, Kilo Health, and so on."

One caveat on her list: Kilo Health is not yet a confirmed unicorn. Lithuania's fifth, Cast AI, crossed a billion-dollar valuation only in January 2026. The point still stands that a country this size keeps minting them.

The Part Investors Tend to Like

I asked whether Lithuanian founders raise and spend like American ones. They do not, and the answer was blunt.

"You kind of look after money a little bit more, the startups are leaner. So I would say they use money smarter. It's not about, you know, burn, burn, burn," she said. "Okay, if it didn't work out, tough luck, I'll start something else again, burn, burn, burn. So there's a lot of bootstrapped founders here as well. So overall, I think it's just more cautious with money. So as an investor, I would like that."

Then I asked where the whole thing is headed.

"A couple of years ago I spoke to one investor from the US, and he told me that Lithuania at the moment reminds him of Boston 20 years ago," she said. "Like there is this sort of beginning, a bit of hunger. You can feel that things are moving. And hopefully 20 years later we're going to be attracting very big names and big investors."

Where the Money Goes

The winners here are private. Revolut does not plan to list before 2028, and Vinted and Nord Security are privately held. Public-market exposure sits one layer out, and for US investors each of these trades as an American depositary receipt:

- Swedbank (SWDBY) : funds Rockit; the dominant retail bank across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
- Wise (WSE) : a European cross-border-payments firm that already trades publicly, a rough comp for a Baltic fintech after it leaves private valuations.
- Barclays (BCS) : Rockit's predecessor was a Barclays project, and Revolut's private valuation now tops Barclays' market cap.
- Adyen (ADYEY) : the payments infrastructure European fintechs plug into as they scale.

Revolut and Vinted stay on the watchlist until they decide the private market has run its course.

The Bottom Line

The ambition is specific, and so is the weak spot. I asked where Rockit itself wants to be.

"I would like to become one of the leading accelerators. If I can dream of big accelerators that people know names of, like Techstars, then I would like Rockit to grow," Žemaitytė-Kirkman said. "But if you ask me about the challenges, the biggest challenge now is the later-stage investment. There's quite a bit for the early stage, even local investors, Baltic, Nordic. But when it comes to the later stage, everything passes to Series B, you have to start looking to the US or somewhere else."

That is the whole thesis in one answer. If the American investor is right and this really is Boston two decades early, the late-stage money eventually comes to Vilnius instead of the other way around. The only open question is who is positioned before it does.