All about Revolut

Life Hacking
531

So what is the most convenient, yet inexpensive way to handle multiple currencies? I’m a bit bummed by Revolut. I used to have a PLN IBAN, so people could send me PLN directly. Now it’s gone. 200 CHF withdrawal per month - I can live with that.

The 1250 conversion limit is the worst. When I went for holiday to country X, I used to convert 2000 CHF to their local currency, then withdraw the equivalent of 200 from ATM on arrival. Then the weekend surcharge would not affect me. At the end, if there was anything left, I would convert it back.

I also use Revolut for small monthly fees in foreign currencies, like Patreon, Youtube etc. You can easily see who you authorized.

I get why they had to make the conditions worse. Corona…

In the meantime, I’m trying to make my life a bit easier and carefree. I don’t want to have to memorize Revolut’s new complex rules, not to be badly surprised. But I still don’t want to give a fat bank 3% for every forex transaction. Suggestions?

3 Likes
532

If you know 1 month in advance where you’ll travel to, you could pre-converse the currency? Even if you don’t end up going you could converse it back in some later month…

I also find it frustrating that it has become increasingly intransparent. I’d prefer to pay a couple CHF more in a year if in return I didn’t have to worry about getting screwed.

533

Sure, if you don’t forget, you can do it. But convenience and flexibility is not ideal. I’d like to have a solution that is convenient and is priced fairly. Revolut ticks many boxes but it’s a bummer that they didn’t make any progress in having dedicated IBANs for respective currencies. So if someone should send me PLN, they have to use SWIFT, and SWIFT is one of very few services, where you don’t know how much it’s gonna cost, but probably a lot.

1 Like
534

Transferwise. (Hardly anything is free with them, but it‘s fairly priced)

For card payments, you could use Neon at Mastercard rates.

1 Like
535

Wait wait… I didn’t think about it… if you use Revolut to pay any purchase in usd (amazon.com, ebay, patreon) are you going to pay 0.3%?
It basically kills Revolut as a credit card then.

536

Hmm, this was the only reason why I added my revolut card to Amazon (EUR)?

537

Where does this 0.3% come from? Sorry I’m not up to speed with ever more Byzantine costs and fees of Revolut.

1 Like
538

That’s only if you exceeded the monthly exchange amount, right? I use Revolut Metal for the cashback so I’m not bothered about the fee changes too much.

2 Likes
539

Exactly, the fee is just for wire transfers, card payments are not changed (as far as I understood it right of course).

3 Likes
540

You pay 15.99 to get 0.1% back? (15990 a month) assuming you spend in EU (1% outside EU)

2 Likes
541

Revolut Premium costs 72 GBP per year, Metal costs 120 GBP per year. That’s 48 GBP per year extra for a 0.1% cashback in Europe. But let’s assume you exclusively travel outside of Europe, so it’s 1%. 4800 GBP per year will make Metal a worthy option. Makes sense, I guess.

To me it would be sufficient if Revolut had a forex limit of 10’000 GBP per year and ATM withdrawals of 2’000 GBP per year (compared to the current 1’000 & 200 per month). And all options, including metal, don’t offer local IBANs for most currencies (you only get the IBAN of the country of your residence + EUR + GB ).

Browsing Revolut pricing page is annoying, a lot of small print and not every restriction is mentioned.

3 Likes
542

I got it from the pdf mentioned by @trotro

image
image693×298 24.1 KB

I’m just not sure if it counts just for transfers or else. The pdf says “payments” but below “send”, so I suppose even buying a phone cover on aliexpress counts.

543

It’s a freaking nightmare.

image

This is a confusing design decision. It seems like you can’t do international payments, but the real description of the feature is the small grey text. Also using different words. Payment or transfers? Should I get a bachelor in Finance to understand hwo it works?

image

Again… Title in black. feature in grey…

I am confused.
From the pricing page I get that I can use it to pay once for free only. Or once to send money to friends.
It has basically become a tiny bit better than my Postfinance Eur card. The only advantage is the exchange rate.

Edit: I suppose it’s not meant to be used as a credit card anymore

1 Like
544

It never was a credit card, always as debit card or am I mistaken?

1 Like
545

You are rigiht. I should have written “payment mode”.
You can’t use Revolut as payment mode anymore. Or at least the free one. If I understand it well…

546

Yeah, the whole update mail they sent and the pdf are soo confusing.
Either they are really incompetent or they are deliberately trying to obfuscate what they’re doing.

I’m guessing the second one considering this type of phrasing:

We are combining “cross-border” and “SWIFT” into one simple and transparent category we call “international payments”.

547

I‘m going by (what I suppose is) costs, not necessarily their fees.

But then, I‘m obviously not the only one that doesn’t quite get the pricing they‘ve been publishing lately.

548

iirc Metal in Switzerland is 160.- Fr. but yes I did spend about 5-10k CHF outside of Europe… before COVID… however I get the cashback in Bitcoin which appreciated quite a bit, so even the 0.1% in Europe became several hundred CHF.

1 Like
549

By the way, as an alternative to Revolut, anybody used PostFinance Travel Card? At a first glance it looks like a terrible deal:

  • when you top up, you pay 1.5% commision
  • 7.50 CHF fee for withdrawals abroad
  • 1.00 CHF fee per transaction
  • exchange rate not specified in the offer
  • free account at HotelCard

So if I spend 6000 CHF in a year, make 6 withdrawals, and 100 transactions, the total cost is:
90 CHF + 45 CHF + 100 CHF = 235 CHF

I don’t know who would go for it any why. I guess someone who does not know Revolut? Can anybody share their experience? One reason might be the HotelCard account. It costs 99 CHF per year and offers some decent discounts on selected hotels. Though I don’t see why this has to be a packaged deal…

550

Travel card is for boomers without revolut or neon and just to be considered legacy

5 Likes