Revolut has partnered with New Zealand-based Open Finance provider Akahu to use the country's regulated Open Banking system for automated credit card underwriting.
Under the partnership, Revolut will use real-time applicant financial data accessed through Akahu's APIs to assess credit card applications. The process replaces elements of a workflow that have historically relied on manual paperwork, uploaded bank statements, and extended review periods. Applicants will instead be able to consent to sharing their financial data directly, enabling automated decision-making in place of document submission.
New Zealand's Open Banking regime has, until recently, operated on an industry-led basis. The transition to a regulated framework gives the model greater structural consistency and positions it as a credible foundation for core banking products beyond account aggregation and personal finance management.
Lending automation and data use
Revolut, which reports more than 70 million customers globally, plans to feed data obtained through Akahu into its own credit risk systems. The stated aim is to support faster decisions and provide a more granular assessment of an applicant's financial position, drawing on income patterns and spending behaviour rather than static documents.
The credit card market has historically been one of the more document-intensive segments of consumer lending, even as other areas of retail banking have moved online. Automated decisioning using real-time transaction data could reduce application abandonment rates, particularly on mobile channels where friction in document submission tends to be higher.
The use of Open Banking data in day-to-day credit underwriting remains limited across most markets, despite broader policy discussions around consumer data portability and competition. The Revolut-Akahu arrangement represents one of the more direct applications of Open Banking infrastructure to front-line lending operations, and places New Zealand among a small group of markets where Open Finance data is actively being used in credit assessment.
Ecosystem implications
For Akahu, the partnership extends the utility of its infrastructure beyond personal finance tools into regulated lending products, demonstrating that Open Finance connectivity can underpin core financial services. The deal illustrates how consent-based data sharing can be operationalised within a structured regulatory environment.
A company official at Revolut noted that the integration could support more tailored lending decisions for applicants whose financial profiles are not well captured by conventional assessment methods, pointing to a broader debate within the industry over whether richer real-time data can improve both credit access and lending discipline.
The arrangement is likely to be watched by other lenders and infrastructure providers in the region as a test case for the practical application of New Zealand's regulated Open Banking regime.
