Yesterday afternoon the courier arrived delivering my bank card from the UK and this morning I had a chance to test it out. I needed to make sure it was working before transferring over my funds from the closed account to the new Revolut account. My old bank account in the UK has been closed for transactions besides withdrawals for 8 days now. This was a major hassle that I was never expecting and I am glad there was a solution available.
Over the counter tap and paying works, but the ATM's the card is not accepted like the slot for the card is closed. I tested my other bank card and this was accepted so it is definitely the card. I did not want to push it to hard and break the card or have the machine swallow it as this has happened before. That was a mission trying to retrieve a foreign bank card from a local bank branch and do not want to do that again.
I did a quick check online with other queries people had submitted and this is only a problem with old ATM's. How would I have guessed South Africa is 10 years behind and they have ageing infrastructure not up to date. This is not a train smash as one day they will have newer ATM's and we have a new local shopping center opening next month so the chances are these will be the latest ATM's. This is not just a SA issue however and can happen in the UK with the metal cards which I have one of those. I will be ordering a normal plastic one which I can collect from my brother when I am over in the UK.
The other option is a cardless ATM transaction where you use your phone number and yes this is something I have never had to do before so this is all new to me. Teething problems which are not Revolut's fault and is the local banks who are behind with technology. We are always going to be learning new things and new apps as technology never stands still so cardless banking was to be expected.
I am happy with the services Revolut is offering not that I have any other choices right now as finding an off shore bank account is not easy unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars. The UK off shore accounts based on the Isle Of Man required 100K GBP as a minimum amount and Dubai wanted $500K which was then negotiated down to $60K. South Africa has such a bad name internationally when it comes to banking and we are no better off than money launderers and drug dealers. Everyone is tarred with the same brush due to the high risks involved with touching anything South African.
The only reason how I got the amount down to $60K is because my salary comes from the UK and I have been squeaky clean with no funds coming from SA. Any transactions flowing from SA is the problem due to how gangster like SA has been run with very corrupt politicians.
This afternoon I am loading up the Revolut bank account and then will be purchasing flight tickets to the UK, hotels and car hire all for next week.
This is how it should have played out and I am working on part 2 as there are some problems with the UK bank account. You cannot make this stuff up and they have messed up big time.