Revolut

[Nikia]

Looking ahead at our options for banking when in the Med.
The "Revolut" account seems like a good option.
Does anyone have experience of using them, and/or information and feedback - good or bad?

Thanks

 

[Yngmar]

Worked fine until I reached the €4k limit, now it's stuck because I need to do some paperwork verification dance (upload ID and "source of funds" evidence), which is tricky for fulltime liveaboards. Otherwise really good. You get instant notification on your phone for any transaction, which is very handy. The physical card works like any other card, except the currency conversion rate is much better. The virtual card(s) didn't work everywhere, only some sites accepted them. Didn't use that feature much. You do now need to provide proof of ID (take a photo of your passport) even before the €4k limit.

Edit: Sounds like you've not left yet. Set up everything there before you go and you should have no problems for a while. Try and maintain an address in the UK.

 

[GHA]

Revolut very handy at the moment and a last actually got the real card. Been using a virtual card to pay boatyard bills, takes a minute or so to transfer money to the card then transfer to boatyard account, free.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Unless you have a problem with normally banking , just open an euro account . There lot of different accounts about some say this one good other say that one , I found my Halifax works just fine , and most of the time I getting a better rate then what forecaster for that day, when I just use my sterling account .

 

[John100156]

Been using Revolut for nearly two years now in France/Spain/Malta and it works really well. I like the iPhone App, you can check the rates regularly and easily and pair the currencies, FX rates often better than most I have found, just top-up and then convert from £ to € or back again very easily and no charge levied. Limited cash withdrawals but again as I use it no charge levied.....

 

[Tony Cross]

It's perfect for moving UK Pounds into our Greek bank in Euros, you get the inter-bank rate and there are no other fees. It's really fast too, generally I can put money into my Revolut account one day and have it available to move to our Greek bank the next (though that transfer takes a few days). I've moved a lot more than €4k in the time I've had it and even moved more than €4k in one go and I've never run into any verification problems apart from the need to provide ID when you setup the account.

 

[Nikia]

Thanks for the replies,
sounds like it will be worth having, but with other options as well.
I'm unclear about the 4k limit, there's no mention on their website (that I could see)?

 

[Andchar]

They make it very easy to join, but once you hit the 4k limit they ask you to supply various bits of verification for anti money-laundering purposes. They send warnings as you approach 4k of usage, I ignored these and duly found I couldn't make further top-ups until I had jumped through a few modest hoops.

I've used my card a lot in Europe and USA and found it very good.

 

[Yngmar]

I'm unclear about the 4k limit, there's no mention on their website (that I could see)?

It doesn't seem to be mentioned on the website, but it certainly is brought up a lot in their forums. I've definitely encountered it

 

[laika]

You do now need to provide proof of ID (take a photo of your passport) even before the €4k limit.

driver's licence (I don't try and show them my old photo less one) or passport. They ask you to photograph it then take a video of yourself saying numbers and doing actions like looking over one shoulder.

Took 4 goes for them to approve me. Not sure whether they outsource the validation to a far-flung location where people aren't good at imagining how much worse northern europeans look 10 years after their passport photo was taken...

So is this €4k limit total put through the account, amount spent in a month or what?

 

[Tony Cross]

It doesn't seem to be mentioned on the website, but it certainly is brought up a lot in their forums. I've definitely encountered it

That's strange because I've not, and I've moved over 4k Pounds per transaction too. I wonder why?

driver's licence (I don't try and show them my old photo less one) or passport. They ask you to photograph it then take a video of yourself saying numbers and doing actions like looking over one shoulder.

Took 4 goes for them to approve me. Not sure whether they outsource the validation to a far-flung location where people aren't good at imagining how much worse northern europeans look 10 years after their passport photo was taken...

So is this €4k limit total put through the account, amount spent in a month or what?

All I (and my wife) needed was to photograph both sides of our driving licenses and a selfie, we were both approved in a couple of hours. We applied a couple of months apart too, my wife only applied recently (in the last two weeks).

 

[Seven Spades]

As a UK resident I was able to open an Ulster Bank account in Dublin . I did it on-line and then had to go through all the usual KYC stuff but once opened I have a Euro account and you can take put Euros without any foreign exchange fees etc. It was worth the effort, it took some time but now it is open all is OK.

 

[laika]

my wife only applied recently (in the last two weeks).

I applied on thursday after HSBC charged me a rubbish rate +£4 to put a €60 deposit on a b+b in greece. so much for the "global bank" schtick. So either they've changed it in the last couple of weeks or they ask more from you if you use a passport rather than a driving licence.

 

[Nikia]

"Curiouser and curiouser ", glad I asked, maybe not such a straightforward subject?

 

[dunedin]

Revolut generally good, and used quite a bit. When lost a card was great to be able to immediately disable the card myself using the App.
But:
- the Euro 4K limit applies to annual spend - and the paperwork requested to remove that limit is much more than AML regulations require and more than I am prepared to do. (Think some very early adopters don’t have this limit)
- they don’t seem to be able to handle the earmarking of funds process, and consequently Revolut currently does not allow use in most automated petrol or diesel stations - a bit of a problem with many automated diesel pumps in the Baltic, for example.
So worth having but not as the only card in your wallet.

 

[Yngmar]

Reminded by this thread, I've finally gotten off my ass and went about lifting my £4k limit. Take note:

* There's an ID + address verification that you must pass to open an account, or sooner or later thereafter. This has nothing to do with the above limit. I'd done this one some time ago.
* The £4k limit is no longer at £4k, but is now dynamic, and triggered by whatever computer rules they've implemented. So sooner or later you will have to do a "Source of funds" verification. Probably multiple smaller top-ups are less likely to trigger this than fewer but larger ones, but I'm just guessing here. You can read more about this on their blog. This requires different documentation from the above checks - depending on where your funds come from, you might have to upload photos of payslips or whatever applies to your situation.

In my case it took explaining that I'm currently traveling while living off savings and offering some documentation of these (bank statements of savings account). The automatic verification does not comprehend this, so I had to open a support ticket and after some chatbot blabla I've reached a human being who eventually cleared me, so now I can use my account again. All contact was through a text chat interface in the Revolut app. Overall this was much less painful and annoying than dealing with HSBC on the phone, which enrages me every single time.

 

[Tony Cross]

Ah that makes sense. This will be related to the 2007 Money Laundering Regulations I suspect so the apparently variable threshold is probably determined by how confident Revolut are of the source of your funds? We only do UK bank > Revolut > Greek bank transactions which might be why we've not his this limit yet?

In any case, it's so convenient and offers such a good exchange rate that I'll be happy to jump through whatever hoops they need.

 

[Nikia]

Really helpful info,

Thanks again

 

[JumbleDuck]

Looking ahead at our options for banking when in the Med.
The "Revolut" account seems like a good option.
Does anyone have experience of using them, and/or information and feedback - good or bad?

I got a Revolut account to transfer some working funds to a German colleague who had used one for a while. Afterwards she transferred the remaining balance back to me, or tried to. The money left her account, but didn't arrive in mine. According to Revolut they had earmarked it to go into my bank account, but to get it I had to respond to an email I had never received and which for (mumble) reasons they could not re-issue. They could not have given the impression of caring less,and in the end I gave up trying to get the money (about £200) as a bad job.

That, taken with their tendency to punt shares in the company to account holders at regular intervals, has given me the impression of a bunch of incompetents and/or crooks with whom I shall never, ever deal again.