Revolut - Ultracheap FX (prepaid Mastercard)

Tar.Aldarion

I doubt you would have time.

Cortina_MK_IV

I have my eye on a few things on Amazon. 1 EUR = 0.903436 GBP.

J_A_F_A

Cortina_MK_IV wrote: »

I have my eye on a few things on Amazon. 1 EUR = 0.903436 GBP.

For comparison the An Post currency card rate is:
GBP 100.00 Rate 0.8763 €114.12

Chimichangas

The Ayatolla wrote: »

Same here, it's brilliant for the London Underground. Saves having to top up one of the Oyster cards on a trip to London.

Make sure you've a bit of extra money on the card and not the bare minimum travel fee - think it pre-auths around £12 and gives you back the balance based on where you've traveled.

How does revolut work on the tube? Thought oyster was the cheap option for tube?

The high horse brigade

Chimichangas wrote: »

How does revolut work on the tube? Thought oyster was the cheap option for tube?

You tap on and tap off, works out cheaper than buying a single ticket

nsa0bupkd3948x

Chimichangas wrote: »

How does revolut work on the tube? Thought oyster was the cheap option for tube?

You get oyster prices when using contactless.

nsa0bupkd3948x

I am not sure if any one else has experienced this. When I was travelling the ATM was free withdrawals for debit cards (so my n26/aib debit cards had no fee) but credit cards had a $5 fee. As Revolut is a prepaid card it was treated as a credit card and incurred the $5 fee.

Something to keep in mind as it will probably remove the benefit of Revoluts low fees.

gizmo81

Thaddeus Clean Bodyguard wrote: »

I am not sure if any one else has experienced this. When I was travelling the ATM was free withdrawals for debit cards (so my n26/aib debit cards had no fee) but credit cards had a $5 fee. As Revolut is a prepaid card it was treated as a credit card and incurred the $5 fee.

Something to keep in mind as it will probably remove the benefit of Revoluts low fees.

N26 say they charge 1.7% per atm withdrawal in foreign exchange

https://n26.com/eu/pricing/

Was this different to your experience? I'm trying to settle on card for upcoming USA visit.

Thanks

nsa0bupkd3948x

gizmo81 wrote: »

N26 say they charge 1.7% per atm withdrawal in foreign exchange

https://n26.com/eu/pricing/

Was this different to your experience? I'm trying to settle on card for upcoming USA visit.

Thanks

The fees above were charged by the ATM and not the bank. N26 charge 1.7% for foreign ATM withdrawals for their standard product. I've the N26 Black account. €5.90 per month but no foreign atm fees.

Yggr of Asgard

gizmo81 wrote: »

N26 say they charge 1.7% per atm withdrawal in foreign exchange

https://n26.com/eu/pricing/

Was this different to your experience? I'm trying to settle on card for upcoming USA visit.

Thanks

There are different types of charges.

Banks / Providers have their own like in this case N26 charges 1.7% for foreign currency exchange on ATM withdraws. These charges you see on your bank account post the transaction (if the bank follows the EU rules, otherwise it might be baked into the final amount).

Revolut will not charge you a fee for a withdraw up to 200€ a month, after that they charge 2% (or 400€ if you go for the premium variant).

ATM Providers (Banks or others) in some countries also charge a fee for you using their particular ATM. These charges are displayed either on the ATM or when you try to withdraw. These will usually be part of the amount requested from your bank and you will also get charged your banks fees on top of it.

Ireland is sort of an exception that most ATM's providers don't charge you a fee for the service (yet).

This fee is quite common, especially in the USA, so for example if you try to withdraw 100$ you will be charged a 3$ fee, so the ATM request 103$ from your bank and you will be charged the 1.7% on that 103$. The fee's vary from 1$ to 5$ (usually, there are also more expensive ones for the desperate) depending on the ATM provider.

There are some "no fee" ATM's you can try in the US, examples are grocery stores like ALDI, Wawa or try a local credit union's ATM, they usually don't charge a fee in my experience.

gizmo81

Yggr of Asgard wrote: »

There are different types of charges.

Banks / Providers have their own like in this case N26 charges 1.7% for foreign currency exchange on ATM withdraws. These charges you see on your bank account post the transaction (if the bank follows the EU rules, otherwise it might be baked into the final amount).

Revolut will not charge you a fee for a withdraw up to 200€ a month, after that they charge 2% (or 400€ if you go for the premium variant).

ATM Providers (Banks or others) in some countries also charge a fee for you using their particular ATM. These charges are displayed either on the ATM or when you try to withdraw. These will usually be part of the amount requested from your bank and you will also get charged your banks fees on top of it.

Ireland is sort of an exception that most ATM's providers don't charge you a fee for the service (yet).

This fee is quite common, especially in the USA, so for example if you try to withdraw 100$ you will be charged a 3$ fee, so the ATM request 103$ from your bank and you will be charged the 1.7% on that 103$. The fee's vary from 1$ to 5$ (usually, there are also more expensive ones for the desperate) depending on the ATM provider.

There are some "no fee" ATM's you can try in the US, examples are grocery stores like ALDI, Wawa or try a local credit union's ATM, they usually don't charge a fee in my experience.

Thanks YGGR that's really helpful.

I have a little 3 day trip courtesy of Norwegian and am looking forward to using the Revolut when I'm there. Last time in NY i used An Post and it was a little bit of hassle but I believe thy've improved the user experience, topping up.

Anyway, I mainly intend to use my card in store (praying Revolut have Apple pay by November).

I'll only want probably a couple of dollars on me so I might take them out in the Airport before I go

I have bus tickets, theatre tickets etc all payed for so doubt I'll need a lot of actual cash, as I just won't have time to spend it lol

hawkwind23

Quick question RE: contactless card

Want rather than need the contactless , seems fairly handy for small purchases and my current account doesnt offer it.

Its £5 for the card and £5 for postage.
But if i go premium would i get the different design card? then cancel and pay the £10 penalty for ordering card and cancelling
Or do they just send the standard card
Tks

MB05

hawkwind23 wrote: »

Quick question RE: contactless card

Want rather than need the contactless , seems fairly handy for small purchases and my current account doesnt offer it.

Its £5 for the card and £5 for postage.
But if i go premium would i get the different design card? then cancel and pay the £10 penalty for ordering card and cancelling
Or do they just send the standard card
Tks

I can't answer your question re ordering the premium card and then cancelling but there is no fee for the standard card. Just €6 for postage.

hawkwind23

Sorry should mention it's an extra card not a new account.
So its looking a fiver for that.
Just seems a bit dear for an extra card

Yggr of Asgard

You have to pay 10£ for a spare card (5£ for the card and 5£ for delivery), only the first card is free with a 5£ delivery charge. Unfortunately they don't offer free upgrades to NFC cards for us earlier adaptors. We are expected to shell out the money if we want NFC.

If you order a premium card during your trial and than cancel the trial you will be charged a 10£ delivery fee retrospective for what than is a useless card as you will loose the card and have to revert back to a standard card. The card is only valid as long as you are a premium member.

So if you wants NFC, a new card is what you need to order for 10£.

The Ayatolla

My premium card still works even though I've cancelled my premium trial?

Yggr of Asgard

The Ayatolla wrote: »

My premium card still works even though I've cancelled my premium trial?

Really, that is a nice surprise because according to Revolut it will no longer work and you need to get a standard card if you don't have one already.

hawkwind23

thanks all.
Yeah it seems a bit much to pay an extra tenner! my card has almost a year before it expires
Dunno whether to take a chance on the premium card , anyone else kept theirs after cancelling?

Dodge

FWIW I'm in the US at the moment with the standard card and it works perfectly everywhere

Used one ATM that charged $1.50 but that was the same regardless of what card you used

Everywhere else accepted the card. A couple of times I had to select payment in USD rather than GBP on screen. Payments made by magstripe, chip and pin and contactless

Oh and used it for lyft and uber too

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

brendan86

Patww79 wrote: »

My standard card won't even work in a chip & pin machine here, so I can only use it for online purchases.

You sure you dont have the function disabled in settings?

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

jack presley

https://twitter.com/revolutapp/status/894614157982609408


improvements eh?

Dardania

Just to note, so far, revolut working fine for me in Russia. Not missing a beat this far

isnottheword

jack presley wrote: »

improvements eh?

Hmm...did they finally notice they need to address something...

killbillvol2

Mine was declined this morning in Bangkok. Support got back to me in an hour and said they'd had an issue with their payment processor and that it's fixed.

It wasn't a big deal at the time but it's the third transaction out of the last four that's given me a problem. Definitely not to be depended on as your main card.

flangemeistro

killbillvol2 wrote: »

Mine was declined this morning in Bangkok. Support got back to me in an hour and said they'd had an issue with their payment processor and that it's fixed.

It wasn't a big deal at the time but it's the third transaction out of the last four that's given me a problem. Definitely not to be depended on as your main card.

Uh oh now you've gone and done it. Don't aggravate the shareholders.

They'll be on any minute now saying it's "laughable" that people are complaining about a free service.

Yggr of Asgard

Global Processing Services (GPS) which is their processor (i.e. the company that sits between them and Mastercard network to process the transactions) is very unreliable in the last couple of month.

While GPS's solutions are excellent and used by most new fintech companies (Curve, Monzo, Monese, Revolut, Fire) the reliability in recent month has been shocking with outages happening so often, it's really questionable what is going on over there with them.

The only way for revolut to address this is by either becoming their own processor (like bunq recently) or go with a different one, but the last is not going to happen because revolut relies heavily on GPS's services to provide it's services from wallet over multi currency transactions on the card to other crucial elements of their service, in certain elements Revoluts App is just a wrapper for GPS's apex systems.

And even when try to get away for part of the services like with the new virtual IBAN number for the wallet Revolut makes a mess out of it by not going with the SWIFT ISO standard, which is why some banks have problems sending money to the LT account with UK SWIFT code.

Revolut is good as a attempt to save some money but it always require a back-up card just in case and giving how the new cards now will be marked as debit/prepaid it will also be better to use a real credit card for certain transactions (hotel check-in etc.) and than just use Revolut to pay the final bill.

In addition the horrible customer service and inability of Revolut to do the most basic common bank actions should limit the amount you keep with them. A financial service provider that does not know how to react to MT103 messages from other banks for missing payments is just not good enough to be a daily driver.

It might be wise just to load funds for immediate spending on a pay as you go option into the wallet (via debit card or IBAN) and than spend it but not keep too many funds on them in case of errors.

Now the processing issue is not Revolut only (as said) so let's hope GPS get's their act together and sorts out what ever is happening in their network.

Quackster

killbillvol2 wrote: »

Mine was declined this morning in Bangkok. Support got back to me in an hour and said they'd had an issue with their payment processor and that it's fixed.

It wasn't a big deal at the time but it's the third transaction out of the last four that's given me a problem. Definitely not to be depended on as your main card.

Yeah, mine was declined in a pub in Wales on Sunday for same reason. Had cash on me so no hassle but definitely not to be relied on as your only payment method.

Quackster

killbillvol2 wrote: »

Mine was declined this morning in Bangkok. Support got back to me in an hour and said they'd had an issue with their payment processor and that it's fixed.

It wasn't a big deal at the time but it's the third transaction out of the last four that's given me a problem. Definitely not to be depended on as your main card.

Yeah, mine was declined in a pub in Wales on Sunday for same reason. Money came out of my account but reversed again about ten minutes later.

Had cash on me so no hassle but definitely not to be relied on as your only payment method.