The base currency is your home currency which is determined by your bank account’s country and residency. I live in Switzerland and bank with UBS so my base currency is CHF. I also have both euros and pounds in my wallets = 3 currencies in total but UBS would not allow me to withdraw euros today - only CHF. I was able to withdraw euros with my UBS Card. So far I have used my Revolut card for multiple purchases and I topped it up with 300k CAD to move money to Switzerland (very easy btw) but until today had not tried a withdrawal.
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Huh 300 kCAD in Revolut? 
I have 1000 EUR and I am thinking about what happens in case of bankrupcy
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i used it as a free transfer service across borders as I sold a property in Canada and wanted to move the funds across to Switzerland. They took 1 hour to approve this higher top up limit from the time i provided the purchase/sale agreement and a bank statement. I do not keep 300k in the Revolut account however (only 3k). This transfer would have cost more than 2k with TransferWise and more than 6k with my Canadian bank.
My understanding is tha tthe money is ringfenced / segregated in accounts at Lloyds which cannot be loaned out and that Revolut itself is not a bank that holds our money. That said, it will be nice when they do get their European bank license. Not sure what implications for the UK moving out of EU will be however.
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Has anybody tried transferring CHF from Revolut to International Brokers? I cannot set up the payment because Revolut does not recognize the Citi swift code CITIGB2LXXX. Revolut cannot seem to resolve this. I have tried with no X’s or just one X. I was so sure people on this forum had done this successfully. Let me know you have any top tips to get them added as a payee. Thx
Transfer money to your swiss bank account and from there to IB, what the *** is the problem??
Why do you have the need to ***??? i was not asking about transferring from my bank. I know that is possible. What i was asking if if anybody had expeience transferrring from Revolut. This is where i have a very large 6 figure sum i’d like to transfer directly (in a single transaction which is not possible with the bank). Transferring from REvolut to IB’s Euro account works fine. The CHF one does not.
It’s impressive that you trust a mobile app enough to keep over 100’000 there 
. The Revolut EUR account is in your name I think, with your individual IBAN. No other currency has this yet (maybe GBP). Why do you want to transfer CHF to IB? I thought exchanging CHF to EUR at Revolut should be dirt cheap? Btw, do you have the premium account at Revolout? I think it’s kind of pricey, 7 GBP per month? I struggle to imagine for whom it would be worth it.
I sold a house aborad, transferred the money to Revolut in my home currency CHF whereas the bank would have charged 6k for this transfer and TransferWise would have charged more than 2k. I was using Revolut as a cost efficient transfer vehicle and so not planning to keep the money there, hence the need to move it out. I will invest the money in IB now and i thought the simple thing to do would be to transfer the CHF directly from Revolut to IB. This is easily done with their Euro account and is also easily done with CornerTrader. Are you saying i should just tranfser in Euros to IB? Actually i don’t really know which currency is best to transfer to them.
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Well with Revolut EUR you have your personal IBAN, so maybe that’s why it works. If the costs by Revolut to convert CHF to EUR are low (maybe check simultaneously what exchange rate would IB provide for the same trade), then I would do that in your case. Once you got Euros at IB, you can convert them to USD at under 0.01% cost. I assume you will buy assets in USD.
Sorry for being so direct, but you’ve wasted everyone’s time here on a frankly rather stupid question that has at least two obvious solutions which it doesn’t take Einstein’s IQ to figure out.
Solution A: get the money to your swiss bank account and transfer from there. This is just as cost effective: CHF transfer from a swiss bank to IB is a domestic transfer and free of charge. And you’re about just as likely to bump into KYC/AML folks as with a transfer from Revolut
Solution B: go bug Revolut with this sh*t, the problem’s on their end
Transferrring a 6 digit sum to Revolut? Are you NUTS? They’re still a startup, not a bank, I don’t keep more money than I’m comfortable losing with them and don’t advise anyone else
If I were you I’d get that money ASAP to the first real bank account in my control
Really? I can imagine they’d charge you that much for currency conversion, but not for a simple transfer, even if it’s international
And what was the problem with transferring money directly to IB in the first place?
What was wrong was a 6k CAD transfer fee from my Canadian bank.
Sounds steep if true. But that’s irrespective of where you transfer to, doesn’t matter whether it’s IB or Revolut, right? So still choosing Revolut was suboptimal
Not at all. The money was in another country and the transfer would have cost that much to send to the UK/IB via a bank. Transfer wise would not execute the transfer biut still would have been a couple of thousand. With Revolut I just sent local funds, they were converted with no fees and moved out immediately. Not suboptimal.
I still find hard to believe they’d charge so much a CAD-CAD transfer without currency conversions even if it’s across borders. Wire transfers usually incur some small fixed fees on the order of $20-30
With IB there’s a good chance it would have also been local transfer. Deposit instruction varies by currency. For example you deposit USD via ACH or wire transfer directly to IB’s american entity, IB LLC in Connecticut. This page claims they offer Canadian bill transfer and Canadian EFT for CAD deposits - https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1544
Another option could have been to buy some index fund at your canadian bank or nearest broker and instruct them to transfer the positions afterwards
Yes the Canadian banks are terrible for this. Today/tomorrow my bank would convert 100 CAD for 76.86 USD and on xe.com the rate is 79.18, My options were limited to only transferring to major banks as i could not be present in Canada to execute this transfer myself. In Canada you can only send ~2500 electronically. I went through a huge production to get them to send it to Lloyds/Revolut after a botched TransferWise transaction where they held my money for one month and then returned it. I can not open a trading account to buy funds in Canada because i am not resident there, nor have I been for 20 years. I feel like i looked at all the options but you do have some good suggestions here. Every time i sell a property there i go through this hassle.
I tried to make a transfer to my EUR account in Revolut using PF however they me to pay either 2 or 12 CHF for the service. Am I doing something wrong or has there been a change?
Tried it again and it worked. Sent 50 EUR from PF and 50 EUR arrived at Revolut in less than 24 hours
From the short description on their website it looks like the credit card is free (except for the plastic copy). Is there a catch somewhere? I wonder how they earn money? By hoping that you use credit instead of debit and charging you with interest and with this business version?
I think they make money with their tiered premium accounts.
For example with their free account you can withdraw a max. of 400 CHF abroad of ATMs. “Premium” accounts give you higher limits.
I am still waiting for a swiss IBAN so I can transfer money to them for free…
No, 200 CHF. 400 CHF is for premium accounts…
I read once an interview with the manager of Revolut for Poland. He said something like VISA and Mastercard give them a kickback of the interchange fee. So the shop pays Mastercard 0.3%, and a part of that goes to Revolut.
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