Topping up Revolut card with Credit Card

darren72 wrote: »

Out of interest what explanation did you use ?

Does anyone have any experience of this with a Creation card and/or Barclaycard ?

Thanks

That I had (quite truthfully as it happens) topped it up with the intention of using Revolut online at a site (Hargreaves Lansdown) that only takes debit cards, only to discover that Revolut didn't work there so transferred it out to a current account instead. In spite of a long chat with Revolut via Twitter DM I didn't really find out what triggered their concern - probably some automated "suspicious activity" check as I'd taken five top-ups from three cards in 24 hours.

faddy wrote: »

That I had (quite truthfully as it happens) topped it up with the intention of using Revolut online at a site (Hargreaves Lansdown) that only takes debit cards, only to discover that Revolut didn't work there so transferred it out to a current account instead. In spite of a long chat with Revolut via Twitter DM I didn't really find out what triggered their concern - probably some automated "suspicious activity" check as I'd taken five top-ups from three cards in 24 hours.

Revolut isn't a debit card, it's a Mastercard Prepaid card. You can only get a debit card with a current account - plenty available with banks and building societies which you can fund your Hargreaves Lansdown account with.

Prepaid cards are often used as instruments for money laundering. Many (but not all) people who seek to extract cash from credit cards are up to something dodgy. It looks even more dodgy if you're then using the card with "high-risk" merchants - i.e those where you're buying financial products, credit, vouchers etc. To top it off, using several different cards to load it in a short space of time is going to send alarm bells ringing - and are you using it for ordinary spend and the kind of thing they're advertising, i.e foreign exchange?

Given financial institutions can be severely reprimanded for facilitating money laundering, their cautious behaviour when doing unusual things as a customer should be understood. They're usually ok when you explain exactly what you're doing in addition to providing sufficient proof of source of the funds. They may well block transactions to high risk merchants however.

faddy wrote: »

On BIN Codes it comes up as

Card Brand MASTERCARD
Card Type DEBIT
Card Level PREPAID

And in Revolut's FAQs:

"What type of card is my Revolut card?

A MasterCard® Debit."

...and Revolut now even give you a sort code and account number.

Nevertheless, Revolut attracts the same interchange fees from merchants as a credit card, and is treated the same as a credit card by merchants or institutions who don't accept them (such as Hargreaves Lansdowne) or who impose a surcharge for using them. For example, an easyJet booking using Revolut will attract the fee for using a credit card, not that for a debit card. This is normal for any prepaid card.

So does it just look suspicious if you use many cards to top up or is it also the frequency? I'm off to America in a few months and will want to top up multiple times, maybe more than once a day. I don't want to load too much incase anything happens with Revolut and I can't get my money!

Thank you, how do the rates compare to Revolut? And do you top them up with the app like you do Revolut? Sorry for the questions!