Revolut pre-paid Mastercard

markea

noisy wrote: »

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.

Who are "they"?

misfitlove

My experiences with the Revolut card have so far been extremely positive. I have been preparing my travel money as I go away to the states in 2 weeks.

I ordered the card, it came within 5 days. I topped it up easily and got my bonus £5 through the app support.

I have been converting small amounts to dollars bit by bit - mostly watching for when the Dollar was weakest. (Best I got was £1= $1.57)

I have so far managed to upload almost all of my holiday money onto the card, exchanged at a much better rate than Bureau de Change and have booked a lot of activities (theme park tickets, Estas) in dollars straight from the card online with no problems or charges like I would have got from my bank.

My only issue, and it is not a huge one is that I was hoping to have some cash ready before the holiday to pay for things such as taxis, petrol etc. I found 2 separate cash machines in London that dispense dollars and failed to get the card to work in either.

The first one was the Citi Bank at Canary Wharf, which did not seem to understand the transaction and said I had insufficient funds (which when reading the FAQs I realised was because I have both $ and £ on the card and it confuses the ATM) and then I tried again at a Travelex atm by attempting to take out $40 however the ATM tried to charge me £30 to do this which I quickly declined.

So I suppose my question is will I be able to draw dollars out at all before I go in the UK or will I have to rely on the American ATMs?

Like I say it is not a huge issue, I was just hoping to have everything in place before I go and having spent time converting when the rate was best I don't want to be hit by terrible ATM conversion fees.

x

rnlg

We've just returned from a 3 week holiday in the US. I'm pleased to say that overall we had an excellent experience with the Revolut card.

A couple of feedback points worth considering:
1/ I had an emergency card issued as I left it too late to get a "real" one. This caused some confusion in the US at outlets that asked for my ID and then noticed my card had no name on it. No issues anywhere, they just accepted it, but might be worth having a backup card if you are in the same situation
2/ Payments often start life with a "Pending" status before being finalised. When you check in to hotels they either provisionally take the full amount or a small amount for incidentals, maybe to check your card works. Restaurants will take the base bill quantity and then subsequently finalise it with the tip included. Normally the "Pending" payment vanishes when the payment is finalised, but I had two instances when it didn't, resulting in double the amount being "taken" from my card. After 10 working days any "Pending" payments are automatically cancelled, so you get the money back, but for two weeks you are stuck without that cash. This happened twice for me; once at a restaurant (£67.05) and once a hotel (£940). The restaurant wasn't a big deal, but for two weeks I was down £940 on my card from the hotel, which might be a massive problem for some people. Thankfully I managed to juggle funds to manage.
3/ One hotel overcharged me and I needed a refund. They processed this as usual for a credit card, but I've not seen anything show up in credit on my Revolut account yet... but it was on Friday, so fingers crossed it shows up at some point.

Overall, fantastic experience:
- much better exchange rate than any purchases made on our "regular" cards, saved me about £300 on my holiday
- great for getting cash, just a $3 transaction charge at the ATM
- fabulous app to see transactions in real time so you know how much you're spending as you go
- fast topups (instant for debit card, couple of hours for bank transfers) so easy to add more funds as you go along

Thanks Revolut!

Cannyscot

Can anyone tell me how withdrawal from ATM works in Europe. If i leave my funds in Sterling and I withdraw Euros will it be straightforward, I noticed some people were being asked to make a conversion selection at the ATM? Also if I convert to Euros on my card in advance what will the options be to save confusion?

Can someone from Revolut explain if you load funds prior to making a withdrawal why is that considered suspicious (as per prvious post)? I was thinking of loading money as required at the end of my holiday and dont want to be left without cash?

paulgal31

Mixed feelings on the card.

My partner and I both have Revolut cards.
My experience has been mostly very good. There was a delay with the card, but it didn't impact any trips so this is a minor point. Top ups and transactions have been problem free for me to date.

However, my partner attempted to top her card up by £400 last week. The transaction failed/timed out and the result was a £0 balance on Revolut. This is where things take a turn for the worst, my partners debit card was charged a total of £1500 over 4 transactions, all to to Revolut. This resulted in an un-arranged overdaft of £500 being applied to her account, which given we are in the process of applying for a mortgage, is not optimal.

Two calls to HSBC confirm that the money has gone to Revolut (as far as they are concerned).
Multiple communications with Revolut have yielded the answers from, "the transactions failed and the money never reached us" to "we will have to wait 6-10 days to find out about your transactions".
There was a promise of a statement being emailed out within the day which never materialised.
It has been difficult, but not impossible to contact them by phone. Email response time have been slow to date.

It is still relatively early days and we are hoping for a swift and positive resolution here but to say our confidence in the product has been lowered would be an understatement.

I will post the outcome.

Revolut_Official

ItsMikeE wrote: »

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?

Hi ItsMikeE,

You should treat it as a local transaction, as the card machine will otherwise charge you with it’s exchange rates not Revolut’s (i.e. the interbank rate).

noisy wrote: »

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.

Hi noisy,

It’s actually a combination of transactions, top-ups and or transfers that will flag the system most of the time. We cannot disclose the information on why this occurs. This is a security feature that we have to take to avoid frauds or fraudulent transactions. I trust that your case is being dealt with. But any more questions you may have please do not hesitate to contact support@revolut.com.

misfitlove wrote: »

So I suppose my question is will I be able to draw dollars out at all before I go in the UK or will I have to rely on the American ATMs?

Like I say it is not a huge issue, I was just hoping to have everything in place before I go and having spent time converting when the rate was best I don't want to be hit by terrible ATM conversion fees.

x

Hi misfitlove,

I’m sorry but UK ATMs do not allow us to withdraw in foreign currency as they force you to use their own exchange rate. You will have to withdraw in the same currency as the country you are in.

Revolut_Official

rnlg wrote: »

We've just returned from a 3 week holiday in the US. I'm pleased to say that overall we had an excellent experience with the Revolut card.

A couple of feedback points worth considering:
1/ I had an emergency card issued as I left it too late to get a "real" one. This caused some confusion in the US at outlets that asked for my ID and then noticed my card had no name on it. No issues anywhere, they just accepted it, but might be worth having a backup card if you are in the same situation
2/ Payments often start life with a "Pending" status before being finalised. When you check in to hotels they either provisionally take the full amount or a small amount for incidentals, maybe to check your card works. Restaurants will take the base bill quantity and then subsequently finalise it with the tip included. Normally the "Pending" payment vanishes when the payment is finalised, but I had two instances when it didn't, resulting in double the amount being "taken" from my card. After 10 working days any "Pending" payments are automatically cancelled, so you get the money back, but for two weeks you are stuck without that cash. This happened twice for me; once at a restaurant (£67.05) and once a hotel (£940). The restaurant wasn't a big deal, but for two weeks I was down £940 on my card from the hotel, which might be a massive problem for some people. Thankfully I managed to juggle funds to manage.
3/ One hotel overcharged me and I needed a refund. They processed this as usual for a credit card, but I've not seen anything show up in credit on my Revolut account yet... but it was on Friday, so fingers crossed it shows up at some point.

Overall, fantastic experience:
- much better exchange rate than any purchases made on our "regular" cards, saved me about £300 on my holiday
- great for getting cash, just a $3 transaction charge at the ATM
- fabulous app to see transactions in real time so you know how much you're spending as you go
- fast topups (instant for debit card, couple of hours for bank transfers) so easy to add more funds as you go along

Thanks Revolut!

Hi rnlg,

If you notice on your bank you will usually have the amount of money in your account and then amount available. In most cases the difference in this is the pending transactions that have not been shown in your statement. Revolut actually shows you this, giving you information on the transaction. The transactions are still pending merchant's confirmation or reversal. If the merchant doesn't revert the transactions explicitly, they will be reverted automatically in 10 days. However if you are worried about a pending transaction we can always look into this if you email support@revolut.com.

Cannyscot wrote: »

Can anyone tell me how withdrawal from ATM works in Europe. If i leave my funds in Sterling and I withdraw Euros will it be straightforward, I noticed some people were being asked to make a conversion selection at the ATM? Also if I convert to Euros on my card in advance what will the options be to save confusion?

Can someone from Revolut explain if you load funds prior to making a withdrawal why is that considered suspicious (as per prvious post)? I was thinking of loading money as required at the end of my holiday and dont want to be left without cash?

Hi Cannyscot,

Yes, you can do this, or exchange to Euros earlier if you like the rate. The money will be converted at time of transaction.
You can load funds prior to topping up, but we can’t disclose our rules for blocking cards because if frauds see these rules, they may be able to find other ways of committing fraud. I hope you can understand.

paulgal31 wrote: »

Mixed feelings on the card.

Hi Paulgal31,

We are aware of your issue and we are working on it. You will receive a reply today.

Green2griffin

I am looking to get this card for my upcoming holiday but I am only going to need it for this one week, is de-acrivating or non-use going to cost me?

mageliken

Can anyone tell me whether or not this counts as a credit card (and therefore whether or not purchases would benefit from Section 75 protection)? If it does not, would topping up my Revolut account with a credit card give me the Section 75 benefit?

I'm planning a trip to the US and I'm hoping I can use the Revolut card to obtain actual cash. To avoid ATM charges, can anybody tell me if they have had success getting 'cash back' when paying at retailers using the card?

Revolut's Terms and Conditions refer to the Cardholder Agreement but I can't actually see where these can be found - could anyone point me in the right direction please? I'm thinking they might help to answer some of my questions.

Joshg1803

Dear Revolut Official

I must first of all state that the experience we have had so far with the funds on our revolut card have been exceptional, cards accepted ever where and cash withdrawals and currency exchanges have been very straightforward

The frustration I have however is that we're finding it difficult to add more funds to our account.

Both my Partner and I have revolut accounts, but due to a delivery issue mentioned on an earlier post, we only had one physical card delivered in time for our holiday (despite ordering on the same day) and as such am Currently in the USA with one card between us and our debit cards.

The other half successfully placed £1,000 on the revolut account prior to our trip, and we've had no issues accessing this as per above, however we have now 3 times tried to deposit a further £2,500 via 3 different methods, firstly a bank transfer from her account - this was blocked by her bank who stated that the bank details of the revolut account were preventing them depositing further funds (very peculiar). I then tried to top up her account with my debit card, this also failed (I assume as this was a debit card in a different name to her account) and then again today, I transferred the money into her account so she could top up via debit card. The closest we got to success was on this 3rd attempt, where the transaction showed as pending within the app for a few hours, but when checking to see if this had cleared later in the day, this pending transaction had disappeared and still no extra funds added

Naturally this has caused some stress at the start of our holiday and we're currently staring down the barrel at the prospect of having to use our debit cards abroad and incuring the very fee's we took out the card to try an avoid

Can you shed some light on this issue and advise how we can "top up" ASAP - Also if you can confirm whether we can call your support line via skype, that would be ideal to try and resolve this in a timely fashion and to prevent any further holiday stress

(it might also be worth noting that it was my idea to get the revolut card, so if this goes belly up, she will hold it over my head for the rest of my days)

Hope you can help soon