Revolut pre-paid Mastercard

wattc

I signed up on the 17th and the app said my card would be posted on the 19th. It's now the 24th and I've recieved nothing yet. What is the waiting time at present for the physical card??

Revolut_Official

ChrisCares wrote: »

Dear Revolut Official


This is clearly a brilliant idea to overcome the rapacious bank FX costs while hopefully, providing a satisfactory return on investment as use of the service grows. I feel sure any teething troubles will be overcome. My prime concern would be lodging such a full set of personal information with you, especially seeing that major companies like Target, Sony, eBay, JP Morgan and Premera Blue Cross have had hundreds of millions users' personal data hacked. It makes your data an even more attractive proposition for hacking. Despite that, I intend to sign up.

Q1. Are you happy to have people use the card to swap repeatedly between GBP-USD-EUR in what might be Foreign Exchange speculation?


Q2. Does using the card ever result in the seller applying or trying to apply Dynamic Currency Conversion?


Q3. I appreciate that Revolut offers a much broader service than WeSwap and TransferWise, but how are your FX rates likely to compare with them?

Comment: My, and I think others' question has been, what is the interbank rate compared to the midrate found on sites such as xe.com? Is there really something called "Perfect Interbank Rate"? If there isn't, I suggest you drop this term; perhaps providing and explaining the likely buy/sell spread, if any, on interbank exchange rates. For all I know you might explain that the interbank rate is the midrate seen on the likes of xe.com.

Q1) Yes that is fine. For example, If you are in the UK travelling to Europe and you think you are going to get more Euros for your money now than at time of transaction in the future. You can exchange now.

Q2) No. This seems to only be with credit cards. Which we do not accept. However we do something similar. We do exchange money at time of transaction but this is at the best rate possible, the interbank rate.

Q3) We guarantee that we offer the true interbank rate with no additional fees. You can check our rates here: https://revolut.com/savings. You may see our interbank rates differ from others, this is due to a lag in the quotes. We update our rates every half second where as other rates you may be looking at will update every minute or another time frame.

mydiscworld

Dear Revolut Official,

I've a few questions I hope you can answer:

Q1. If I set up an account in Euro, how long will it take for a money to transfer from my Euro bank account to my card?

Q2. If I'm on holiday outside the EU, will it top up as quickly as above?

Q3. I'll be in Asia in September. Travelling to Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia.

With Euro as my currency loaded on the card, can I use the card to make both ATM withdrawals in local currency and pay as a debit card in restaurants?

Many thanks in advance

Jonathan_Sing

I'm looking at purchasing a number of euros to use to pay for wedding costs in Italy over the next 18-24 months and was hoping to exchange now while exchange rates are decent (shame I didnt do it a week ago!!). Would a Revolut card be a decent way of holding X thousand Euros now, realising I will sacrifice any amount of interest and the risk that this is not in a current account?

Any advice would be much appreciated

Revolut_Official

mydiscworld wrote: »

Dear Revolut Official,

I've a few questions I hope you can answer:

Q1. If I set up an account in Euro, how long will it take for a money to transfer from my Euro bank account to my card?

Q2. If I'm on holiday outside the EU, will it top up as quickly as above?

Q3. I'll be in Asia in September. Travelling to Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia.

With Euro as my currency loaded on the card, can I use the card to make both ATM withdrawals in local currency and pay as a debit card in restaurants?

Many thanks in advance

Hi mydiskworld,

A1) If you transfer with debit card it will be very quick almost instant. If you top-up via bank transfer, this can take up to 5 working days.

A2) Yes.

A3) Yes you can. The money will be converted at time of transaction. You can check what currencies we support and their current rates here: https://revolut.com/savings

Jonathan_Sing wrote: »

I'm looking at purchasing a number of euros to use to pay for wedding costs in Italy over the next 18-24 months and was hoping to exchange now while exchange rates are decent (shame I didnt do it a week ago!!). Would a Revolut card be a decent way of holding X thousand Euros now, realising I will sacrifice any amount of interest and the risk that this is not in a current account?

Any advice would be much appreciated

Hi Jonathan Sing,

You can do this, however please realise we have limits on our cards. Card spending is limited to £30,000 or equivalent per year with a sublimit of £5,000 or equivalent per 96 hours meaning that you cannot exceed £5,000 or equivalent in card spending in a 96 hour period. Cash withdrawals from ATMs are limited to £2,000 or equivalent per day. For more information please email support@revolut.com.

ChrisCares

I applied for the card over the weekend, and received it today, Wednesday. That's 2 days including postal time. Having topped up the account, I confirm that the exchange rates offered, and with no fees, are completely in accord with xe.com mid market rates. Revolut rates can be a tiny bit above or below xe.com prices by hundredths or thousandths of a cent (3 or 4 places after the decimal point) due to phasing of updates. I have never before been able to buy at mid-rate apart from doing currency swaps with others who wanted to exchange. Revolut is amazing; it beats WeSwap.com's 1% broker fee by the whole fee.

It might help if the app pointed out that you need to enter your Pass code to see your PIN.

Well done Revolut team.

ItsMikeE

Having posted about my disappointment with how long it took to get my card it is only fair to post about how pleased I am with the card now I get to use it.
Have made one transfer to another user, and used my card in both ATMs and restaurants/shops in Spain. All went very well. Only slight nuisance is that nearly every transaction asked me if I wanted to make the transaction in sterling or Euros when I had no sterling on the card and had deliberately converted all the money to Euros in advance.
Is that part of the multi-currency nature of the Revolut card?

noisy

Blocked Card - be cautious!
Be careful if you are relying on this card to get money out - they may block your card and leave you high and dry. They don't seem to do enough validation initially so when you do something crazy - like load it up to get ATM money out for the night instead of taking your bank card - they might decide this is 'suspicious behaviour' and block you. You're left without money and they won't release it until you've given them more sensitive information. I believe it was they that demonstrated 'suspicious behaviour' rather than me.
I'd previously done 2x test loads and a withdraw with small amounts using the same bank card so I thought I could rely on it. Don't be fooled like me.
Perhaps - when I've done further validation - it might become more dependable but, if not, it's worthless.

eDicky

ItsMikeE wrote: »

Only slight nuisance is that nearly every transaction asked me if I wanted to make the transaction in sterling or Euros when I had no sterling on the card and had deliberately converted all the money to Euros in advance.
Is that part of the multi-currency nature of the Revolut card?

I believe this will happen because the ATM recognises a UK-issued card. so the usual attempt is made by the bank operating the ATM (too often successfully) to stiff the holder for Dynamic Currency Conversion.

In your case, if you did mistakenly select to be billed in pounds but having no pounds loaded on your card, presumably Revolut would convert your euros or dollars to pounds at the interbank rate to cover it. So at least you would not lose out on conversion twice. (I am making this assumption based on the info in this thread.)

Pieeater

Don't know what you are arguing about, there are no fees with this card, none at all, so you don't get the top rate of exchange, please one of you get over yourselves.