First of all, i'm not from Revolut and they didn't pay me or contact me in any way. I'm just sharing my personal experience with this app because I really think that can help some of you ! If you get lost or need some explanation in some point, do not hesitate to post a comment !
Revolut Website
Wikipedia Page
This is a pretty long post so for the most impatient of you, I made a TL;DR below ;)
What is Revolut ?
Revolut is a Smartphone application linked with a debit card. You can top up your USD/GBP/EUR on it and pay in Swedish Kronor or in Thai Bhat or whatever without exchange fees. It used most likely for travellers but I will explain why it could be useful in the everyday life.
Why use it abroad ?
The first reason is this is perfectly free for you. Revolut takes no benefits during the top up and conversion between currencies. They give the MasterCard freely and there is no paid subscription.
With this, you don’t have to change your cash with a huge cost of conversion.
Revolut is used mostly by travellers because the debit card will automatically convert the currency you are paying in the currency of your account. Like most of the debit cards. Currently, you can only top up your account with only 3 currencies (USD/EUR/GBP) but the conversion is possible in more than 100 currencies.
One of my colleague uses it only when he travels with his group of friends. They all top up the same amount on the card and after they use it every time they need. So they don't need to calculate during the trip.
Revolut gives a perfect interbank rate in currency change in real time. Of course, if the value of your money is slightly dropping over time it could be better to convert your money in advance.
One month ago, I’ve made a withdrawal at a local ATM, just to check there is no fees during the conversion.
I’m a french guy currently living in Sweden. The ATM knows that my Mastercard is working with GPB because the revolut company is based on UK. The ATMs asks me to make the conversion to GPB. If it happens to you, don’t do this, it’s not a good idea.
In this picture I’ve made 2 ATM withdrawals with and without the ATM bank conversion and we can see the difference, it’s about 3.53% more expensive. After checking the conversion rate (18 Oct 2016), 1EUR=0,103144929SEK. Well, 200SEK = 20.63 EUR, everything is OK !
Why use it in everyday life ?
Because it cost nothing ! It’s a little less interesting but, if you do not want to have cash on you or, if you don’t want to use your main debit card on the internet, that’s one way to do it. In my case, all standard banks have fees either for the card be for foreign purchases or for withdrawals or a combination of all that. So revolut is a good deal for me even if I stay in my country.
Top up is the only bad point because you need EUR/USD/GBP first. If you do not, you have to make a conversion before transferring your money to your account. Revolut loses a lot of its interest in this case. I hope they will extend this feature to other currencies in the future.
How to begin ?
The first thing you should do to begin with Revolut is downloading the apps. After putting your name, surname and physical address you can wait for the delivery of a MasterCard. After that you have to prove your identity to get a full access, but after 2 pictures of you and your ID card you're in!
Ok, I just got an update about a few weeks ago. It was unlimited so far, but now I can’t top up more than “30.000€/Year”. It’s far enough for me, but you can also prove a ‘source of funds’ if you want more.
This is what I have :
Now you have to put money in your account. You can do it with with a bank transfer (in this case it takes 2 or 3 days) or another debit card, but there are some fees if you top-up in USD.
The Smartphone App
An important feature is the power you have with the smartphone app. With it you can check your money, transactions... I was a bit hesitant at first because there is no dedicated site to manage my account. But the application is really well made and there is a lots of cool stuff inside.
You can check all expenses and top up in the first page. It’s easy to export a PDF or a CSV of this list and really useful when you want to manage your money.
You can send money to another revolut account from the smartphone apps. You don’t have to ‘add’ people, accounts are linked to contacts on your phone.
You can also change the pin code of your debit card when you want. For example, it's possible that one (good) friend asks you to lend your card for a few days. It's really easy to change the code for him and change it again after he give the card back (or not!). If he doesn't want to give it back, you can disable the card in real time, with no cost.
This is the view where you choose one of the
How it's works?
I think that people are more confident with financial tools if they know how the thing works. I will a little bit more technical about the software.
Like I said before, I have no contact with Revolut, therefore all the things that I will explain after is just my personal thoughts. Obviously, I will present some arguments to support my thoughts, but I have no proof of how it works.
This is what you get when you want to top up with your Bank account, you have to enter the code in the transfer if you want that Revolut can find you. That's because Revolut don't give you a 'real' account. You are just giving them money and they know it's yours just with the code.
I accept donations ;)
If you missed the code you will never see your money in your Revolut account and if you didn't write it correctly, someone could get your money instead !
This explains why you can't have a savings account, and an IBAN number. Because you don't have a bank account. You just use the company account.
Revolut and Security
I think every single transaction is done securely with a Bank-level security. The only “weak point” that I can see is the phone app that controls anything. Not to mention that if you lose your smartphone, you lose your account and it will be difficult to recover it. The apps is protected by a 4 digits password. But it’s stored inside the smartphone. I know it because you can access to your account offline. So basically, if someone got your phone, he could crack your password using brute force and access to your account.
How Revolut pays its employees?
Well, there is no Revolut benefit in the currency conversion. No benefits during the top up. They give the MasterCard freely and there is no paid subscription. So we can definitely ask how this business can really make money.
Revolut is a quite young company so this could be just a big start to reach a lot of consumers and then propose another business plan.
One solution could be to charge the seller. They may take a commission on each payment and the seller pays, not you. As i said before, Revolut isn’t a real bank. The company don't have management fees that a bank could have. Maybe that’s why they can propose a free service like that.
TL;DR
- Revolut is a Smartphone application linked with a MasterCard. They gave it freely.
- You can top up your USD/GBP/EUR on it and pay in Swedish Kronor or in Thai Bhat or whatever without exchange fees.
- All the management is done with the application (there is no user inteface in the website).
- You can change your pin card and some security concern in real time within the app. There is no Top-up fees and no transactions fees.
