Revolut pre-paid Mastercard

Anthorn

My relevant info: Projected use is P.O.S. in U.K., France, Monaco and variously online in E.U. and U.S.A. Deposit almost exclusively by bank transfer which originates from banks in France or U.K.

Questions:

(1) Do I understand correctly that the total balance of overall funds is not aggregated/converted to the currency of the country I'm currently in? i.e. GBP stays as GBP, USD stays as USD and Euros stay as Euros?

(2) Who is Revolut? Who owns it?

(3) The "issuing bank" is unnamed but a little digging turns up Barclays. Is the issuing bank likely to vary or change without notice?

(4) My guess is that money in the account is not protected by any compensation scheme but it's worthwhile asking? What guarantees are there?

Edit: Not a very good first experience. Installed the Android app and registered without a hitch. Then came the debit card deposit of £10 and I was greeted with a message that it was unsuccessful immediately followed by a message that it was successful. Confirming ID was just as painful: I chose passport, placed my camera over it and got a message that I needed to use an NFC enabled device (I don't have one and there was no prior information that I needed to use one) to read the NFC chip and that was immediately followed by a message that it was successful. Then came the face capture which I did whereupon the app gave me a blank screen and persisted to give me a blank screen when the app was restarted. Then I had the bright idea to restart my phone and the app loaded. Entered my PIN and see a balance of £10.00 and ID confirmation is stated as "Processing".

My first instinct with anything in particular banking and finance that messes me about is to dump it. But I'll give Revolut a fair go. My response to Revolut is before you issue an app make sure the damn thing is working first. Overall, the app was even more confused than I was!

economy

Revolut is currently offering 1 USD -> 0.6619 GBP and 1 GBP -> 1.4957 USD. 0.6619 * 1.4957 = 0.99000383 which is a 1% spread.

xe.com says 1 USD = 0.665203 GBP. And the Friday low was above 0.6619.

Support even acknowledged it: "I believe it's due to on the weekend as there is no FX trading we have to give the best estimate we can for what we believe the rate will be, this can sometimes mean we allow a little bit of room, just in case the rate swings on Monday."

I get the reasons and I get that FX trading doesn't really happen on weekends. What I don't get is how a company can claim "Our rates mirror the Spot Interbank exchange rate." and to only make money on card interchange, then not give the spot rate and make money via exchange rate spread on weekends.

eDicky

economy wrote: »

Revolut is currently offering 1 USD -> 0.6619 GBP and 1 GBP -> 1.4957 USD. 0.6619 * 1.4957 = 0.99000383 which is a 1% spread.

xe.com says 1 USD = 0.665203 GBP. And the Friday low was above 0.6619.

Support even acknowledged it: "I believe it's due to on the weekend as there is no FX trading we have to give the best estimate we can for what we believe the rate will be, this can sometimes mean we allow a little bit of room, just in case the rate swings on Monday."

I get the reasons and I get that FX trading doesn't really happen on weekends. What I don't get is how a company can claim "Our rates mirror the Spot Interbank exchange rate." and to only make money on card interchange, then not give the spot rate and make money via exchange rate spread on weekends.

I confirm your figures, and similar for other exchange rates on the app today. So its about 0.5% each way. Now that I think about it, I did notice something like this once, but when I looked again, probably on the Monday, the rates matched the mid-rate exactly so I thought I had been mistaken.

So that's for exchange between the main currencies on the app, presumably it's the same for purchases and withdrawals, and for other currencies the spread may be greater - it seemed more substantial for IDR that time, it must have been a weekend. I am not in a location to be able to use it for a test right now.

Thanks for pointing this out - and I think you're right, they should declare this weekend issue, that they hedge a little each way.

NiftyDigits

eDicky wrote: »

I confirm your figures, and similar for other exchange rates on the app today. So its about 0.5% each way. Now that I think about it, I did notice something like this once, but when I looked again, probably on the Monday, the rates matched the mid-rate exactly so I thought I had been mistaken.

So that's for exchange between the main currencies on the app, presumably it's the same for purchases and withdrawals, and for other currencies the spread may be greater - it seemed more substantial for IDR that time, it must have been a weekend. I am not in a location to be able to use it for a test right now.

Thanks for pointing this out - and I think you're right, they should declare this weekend issue, that they hedge a little each way.

Why would you presume such a thing? I would guess that purchases and withdrawals would be at the Mastercard rate. But I don't know either.

economy

Is there any US bank account to withdrawal USD from Revolut without a fee? FrequentMiler tried Citi Gold and there was a $20 charge from an intermediary bank in between.

Seems one can't even transfer USD held with Barclays UK to a savings account with Barclays US.

eDicky

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Why would you presume such a thing? I would guess that purchases and withdrawals would be at the Mastercard rate. But I don't know either.

My assumption was based on the discrepancies I noticed with two purchases in Indonesia earlier this year, and observation that the live interbank rate used by Revolut for in-app conversion is also used for purchases and withdrawals, constantly varying over time, and not necessarily identical to the MasterCard rate (which is set as a constant for the day and posted on the following day). But now that you mention it, I am not sure either.

However looking back on my app at two purchases and one ATM withdrawal I made in Singapore on Saturday Nov 21st, the Revolut rate for all three was constant at £1 = S$2.1361

Historical mid-rates GBP/SGD for Nov 21st:
OandA.com - 2.1456
XE.com - 2.1454

MasterCard - (not available for weekends)
Nov 20th - 2.16304
Nov 23rd - 2.15534

I don't know how to find historical interbank rates, usually they correspond more or less with xe.com. Anyway we can see from this example that Revolut was off on that occasion, more checks by people next weekend would be confirmation (or not).

eDicky

Anthorn wrote: »

My first instinct with anything in particular banking and finance that messes me about is to dump it. But I'll give Revolut a fair go. My response to Revolut is before you issue an app make sure the damn thing is working first. Overall, the app was even more confused than I was!

I think you should be over the worst of it. You did quite well to actually make the app work with verification, most people seem to have to email their photos in, as I did.

Your funds do not change currency until you convert them on the app or spend/withdraw in a separate currency. 'Revolut Limited' are their own card issuer I believe, only using Barclays for the funds to be 'ringfenced' in client accounts. "All account reconciliation is done by independent FCA-regulated e-money institution."

eDicky

economy wrote: »

Is there any US bank account to withdrawal USD from Revolut without a fee? FrequentMiler tried Citi Gold and there was a $20 charge from an intermediary bank in between.

Seems one can't even transfer USD held with Barclays UK to a savings account with Barclays US.

I have not yet tried to withdraw to USD account and have none in the US. But I have loaded Revolut using the debit cards of two USD accounts elsewhere, with no fees. Do Barclays not issue a debit card with their USD account?

NiftyDigits

eDicky wrote: »

My assumption was based on the discrepancies I noticed with two purchases in Indonesia earlier this year, and observation that the live interbank rate used by Revolut for in-app conversion is also used for purchases and withdrawals, constantly varying over time, and not necessarily identical to the MasterCard rate (which is set as a constant for the day and posted on the following day). But now that you mention it, I am not sure either.

However looking back on my app at two purchases and one ATM withdrawal I made in Singapore on Saturday Nov 21st, the Revolut rate for all three was constant at £1 = S$2.1361

Historical mid-rates GBP/SGD for Nov 21st:
OandA.com - 2.1456
XE.com - 2.1454

MasterCard - (not available for weekends)
Nov 20th - 2.16304
Nov 23rd - 2.15534

I don't know how to find historical interbank rates, usually they correspond more or less with xe.com. Anyway we can see from this example that Revolut was off on that occasion, more checks by people next weekend would be confirmation (or not).

Interesting. I'll make a note to transact only during the week days with this card, for now. Fortunately, I have alternatives.

tell_it_how_it_is

Downloaded app and ordered card on Sat 21st, here's what's happened:

Positive:
- entered 'MSE' code, received £5 topup on top of £10 test deposit straight away.
- tested exchange rates, all worked fine with decent rates.
- verification worked, after being 'pending' for 48 hours.

Negative:
- have not yet received card, despite it supposedly being 'posted' 23rd.
- camera for verification bizarrey upside down, so had to lie on floor to align myself!

The bad news is I'm travelling at the end of the week. However, if it does arrive in time, I'll load a couple of hundred on it to test and give it a whirl.