Revolut Review

Introduction

Revolut is a UK-based fintech company offering mobile-only banking services, including a prepaid debit card, currency and cryptocurrency exchange as well as peer-to-peer payments. The mobile app supports spending and ATM withdrawals in 150+ currencies and holds money in 30+ currencies. There is a zero-fee policy for most of its services and uses interbank exchange rates for currency exchanges.

Opening a Revolut account is relatively simple. Once you have downloaded the app from the App Store or Google Play, verify your identity and proof of residence, add funds to your account by bank transfer or card, then order your new Revolut card.

Banking Features

Accounts:

When registering, you create a default account based on the currency used in your geographic location. Including the default account, you can create up to 24 separate accounts for different currencies.

Payments:

Pay, share bills with your contacts, transfer money.

• Split bills with any of your contacts.
• Transfer money globally, with low fees and the interbank exchange rate.
• Schedule recurring payments.
• Payment links for sending or requesting payments.

Freeze/Unfreeze your card:

In case of a lost card, freeze it in the app. Unfreeze it again when you find it, or report it as lost and get a new one.

Security settings:

Easily adjust what your card can do from the app, i.e. contactless and swipe payments, ATM withdrawals, online transactions, et cetera.

Spend abroad:

In over 150 currencies with the interbank exchange rate, with a small 0.5% fee above the €/£6.000 per month mark.

Withdraw money:

€/£200 (amount depends on a plan) in international ATM withdrawals for free, with a 2% fee for excess amounts.

Revolut Account Types

As a Revolut user, you can choose from three different personal account types and another four business account types to choose from.

Personal account types

	Standard	Premium	Metal
Price per month	€/£0	€/£6.99	€/£12.99
Free UK current account	✓	✓	✓
Free Euro IBAN account	✓	✓	✓
Spend in 150+ currencies at the interbank exchange rate	✓	✓	✓
No fee exchange in 29 fiat currencies	up to €/£6,000 p/mo	No monthly limit	No monthly limit
No fee on ATM withdrawals	Up to €/£200 p/mo	Up to €/£400 p/mo	Up to €/£600 p/mo
Overseas medical insurance	X	✓	✓
Delayed baggage & delayed flight insurance	X	✓	✓
Global express delivery	X	✓	✓
Priority customer support	X	✓	✓
Instant access to 5 cryptocurrencies	X	✓	✓
Premium card with exclusive designs	X	✓	✓
Exclusive Revolut Metal card	X	X	✓
Disposable virtual cards	X	✓	✓
LoungeKey Pass access	X	✓	✓
Cashback	X	X	✓
Exclusive concierge service	X	X	✓

Business account types

	Free	Freelancer	Grow	Scale	Enterprise
Price per month	€/£0	€/£7	€/£ 25	€/£100	Upon request
Multi-user access	1	4	10	30	Unlimited
Free local transfers	5	20	100	1000	Unlimited

To learn more about Revolut business accounts, read our full Revolut Business Review.

A global business current account for easy international payments, with prepaid business cards and an Open API.

Revolut Business accounts include the following specs:

• Instant accounts: send, receive and manage your money in 29 currencies
• Low-cost transfers: send money around the globe, without the rubbish exchange rate
• Prepaid Corporate cards: easily track individual expenses
• Virtual cards: manage payments for Amazon, Google, and Facebook ads
• Revolut Connect: integrate apps like Slack, Xero and more
• Flexible permissions: manage permissions for unlimited users
• Open API: build custom integrations that meet your business needs
• Priority support: dedicated team, 7AM to 10PM GMT
• Scheduled & bulk payments
• Data export to Xero for accounting

Fees

Revolut charges fees on several of its services, although these are generally low fees, especially when compared to the fees charged by traditional banks. Here is an overview of fees charged by Revolut, and under which conditions:
Currency exchange transactions exceeding the total amount of €/£6,000 per month are charged with a 0.5% transfer fee.*

ATM withdrawals exceeding the total amount of €/£200 per month are charged with a 2% transaction fee.*

Topping up: if you top up your account with a card not issued within the EEA (i.e. a US-issued card), a credit card, or a commercial card, Revolut may charge you a small fee to cover costs.

Weekend currency exchange fees: with foreign exchange markets being closed on weekends, Revolut implements exchange fees of up to 1.5% to cover the risk of currency fluctuations.

Card delivery fee: a card usually comes with a £4.99 delivery fee.

* Part of Revolut’s fair usage policy

Security

Revolut’s policies and procedures are designed to protect users’ confidentiality as well as the security of their information, including their non-public personal information. Personal information is stored using third-party servers located in secure data centers protected by firewalls and a ‘restricted access’ policy, in compliance with applicable regulations. All data passed between Revolut’s mobile apps, its servers, and third parties are 2048-bit SSL encrypted.

On top of that, Revolut employs several security settings that can be applied to each of your Revolut cards. Change these at will in the app’s ‘Cards’ section.

• Location-based security: when activated in the app, your phone’s GPS location is used to determine if your card has been compromised and to prevent fraudulent transactions. In suspicious circumstances transactions will be blocked.
• Magstripe Payments: magstripe card payments are generally considered unsafe. Disable this type of payment to help prevent your card from being cloned or used fraudulently. Chip and PIN methods, when available, are strongly preferred.
• Contactless Payments: disable contactless payments in case you’re not paying via contactless methods.
• ATM Withdrawals: disable ATM withdrawals to prevent transactions being carried out at an ATM terminal.
• E-commerce transactions: disable e-commerce transactions to prevent any payments being completed online.

Using the Revolut app abroad

Revolut aims to make traveling abroad as pleasant as possible for its users, enabling – in Revolut’s terminology – “global spending and transfers without rubbish exchange rates”. For users traveling abroad, Revolut offers:

• Spend in 150 currencies at the interbank exchange rate (small fee for transactions above €/£5,000 per month).
• £200 a month in international ATM withdrawals for free (withdrawals above £200/month attract a 2% fee).
• Travel insurance from £1.00 per day.

Revolut Support

The Revolut Support Center consists of two main parts: Community and the Help Center. The Help Center is a searchable knowledge base that covers all aspects of Revolut’s service, with an obvious special focus on the app, categorized into different sections, each covering a specific aspect of the service.

The community is a Q&A forum that has a number of conveniently chosen subcategories that make it easy to navigate, with additional options to check the latest posts, or the most popular ones. Getting information from other users can be of great help to someone just getting started. In any case, these two support pillars offer a lot of tips, tricks and general knowledge about Revolut’s service and the app.

If you are still left with questions after checking the Support Center and the Community forum, you still have the option to contact Revolut’s customer service. You can call them, but the In-App chat option is much preferred over the automated phone line. The chat is available 24/7, but since Premium users are entitled to priority support, waiting times could be longer than expected for standard users.

Conclusion

Revolut offers a very solid app with a wide variety of great features. It is easy to use, works in a very intuitive way, and offers quite a few attractive hidden gems. You can purchase up to five cryptocurrencies straight from the app, using funds available in your account. Revolut values security and, besides encrypting data streams with state-of-the-art encryption, offers a very useful set of security features users can benefit from to keep their Revolut account safe and secure. Revolut is not a fee-free tool, but the fees charged are few and relatively low, and even fewer fees apply to premium accounts.