I’m shortly heading to Portugal (Tavira), does anyone have any experience of using Revolut or pre pay debit cards for withdrawals or spending?
Are they widely accepted does anyone know? Any help appreciated.
yes you can use in most places not a problem, just make sure you have a cash backup as once I was refused in a local petrol station -
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Great thanks. I’ve got some cash anyway. I’ve heard conflicting reports of how accepted pre paid cards are there, fingers crossed it’ll be okay!
for the most part you should be ok.
recently some store may refuse internacional cards (or at least not issued by SIBS) as to fight on the extra fees to merchants
Hi, many thanks for the reply. I found card acceptance was good, and ATM’s were on every corner.
My card was refused in 4 different places… but I’m glad you could use it without problems. 
Revolut is being accepted at every ATM, as all ATMS in Portugal accept mastercard.
Portugal has 2 types of card-networks: multibanco & creditcards. (Revolut falls under those creditcards)
Normally the national multibanco-cards get accepted everywhere. Merchants pay a bit more to offer creditcard acceptance, so they don’t get accepted everywhere.
Most bigger shops and bars/restaurants in tourist areas accept Revolut cards.
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I just got rejected by machines multiple shops and ATMs at different locations in Lisbon…
I have used my card extensively in Portugal over the last year and now live here. Widely accepted but occassionally a problem where the merchant has opted for a lesser level of acceptance (not sure of details, see posts above). So self service petrol stations do not work. Meo the biggest telecommunications supplier will not accept and neither will Lidl’s. Most other big stores, ATMs, and most restaurants and smaller shops in Lagos where I am staying do accept it without any problems.
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What is the benefit of using a revolut card in Portugal v using a regular bank debit/credit card?
I live in a euro currency country and Portugal also uses the euro so I will not have any currency fees.
I am a new revolut card holder and am just learning how to use it and understand the benefits.
If your concern is the fees, the advantage of Revolut is currency conversion. You can make payments in different currencies, such as online purchases, and there will be no fees for the currency conversion from your balance in euros
Not working in Portugal. Tried several ATM, petrol stations, payshops, supermarkets in non of them worked
Where did you try? I use it daily in Portugal and it works perfectly.
Not true. Portugal uses 2 large payment systems. The Portuguese often call them “Multibanco” and “VISA”. Multibanco refers to the local MB system, while VISA refers to foreign cards and all VISA/Mastercard debitcards and creditcards.
All cards issued in Portugal from any of the 27 Portuguese banks have the MB ability. Our Revolut cards don’t have that, so we must rely on merchants/shops to accept our VISA cards.
In conclusion: Revolut cards work in Portugal. They are accepted in all stores where they accept VISA cards.
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I’ve got the card a for a sometime ago, and the card was accepted in “Multibanco” network, so I used to pay like a normal debit card, so a month or 2 till now, the card is getting rejected, at least in 2 merchants/restaurants, so why it worked before and now is getting reject in “Multibanco” network?!
If this is only be used as a “credit card” why it has worked for several months in “Multibanco” network? Something as changed…
The payment that you made before, could never have been accepted through the multibanco system, because your Revolut card isn’t cobranded with MB.
What happens is that merchants sign ups for a POS terminal (called TPA in Portugal). Then the merchant signs contracts for cards it wants to accept. It normally comes with Multibanco by default, but they can sign a contract for Visa/Mastercard, American Express cards or the MB SPOT service.
You probably went to a place before where they had a mastercard/visa contract, even though they swipe the card through the Multibanco POS terminal. You later went to other merchants that only accept Multibanco, and got your card rejected there.
Oh yes it did, and only for a about 2 months, it started to get refused!
Its sad that I don’t have the receipts as proof from those payments with me, but I’m sure it did work without problems and the merchant didn’t have any contract in its TPA for payments in credit!
And I say and confirm this, because I asked to merchant if he did changed something related to payments in his TPA e he said that nothing was changed and the terminal still was the same, and only recently changed to another new terminal (from same bank) related to problems in swiping cards, was reading badly the cards…
So, once again, there is something that was changed in the “Multibanco” payment system to start to refuse payments in debit with this card.