I asked Customer Services this question yesterday, but they side stepped it.
So I’m asking it here, as CS take all day to hold a simple conversation.
The annual top up limit is said to be £30,000. But in the app (ver 3.1 iPhone), under Security>Please Verify source of funds> Verification & Limits in the speedo graphic it shows as €30,000. There is still some difference. Which is it, GBP or EUR?
The figure shown in Verification and Limits, on the speedo graphic is €29,425.
In my Account page, the all time top ups is shown as £23,687, but some of that is not in the current year, although it is all in a rolling 12 months. CS told me the ‘annual limit’ refers to a calendar year.
I’ve just received a message telling me that I’m very close to the top up limit and to verify my identity. I verified my identity when I first got the card. Does really it mean I need to verify the source of funds? If so, I sent 3 pages of bank statements in on the Chat yesterday by following the procedure in Verification & Limits.
If the top up limit is £30k, I’m not close yet. If the top up limit is €30k, I’m nowhere near, as I’ve never topped up in €.
There are another 2 monthly cycles to go before the end of the calendar year and I don’t want to get caught without enough limit for my needs.
I’m now being told by CS that I need to show where the money in my bank account comes from. Is this for Anti Money Laundering legislation? Because all my credit cards and banks don’t care where the money comes from, as long as they get paid, and they happily lend to me rather than me using my own money as is the case with Revolut. Some of them even pay me for the privilege of looking after my money.
This is pretty intrusive. The money I top up with comes from an account in my name, that’s all that matters. How far back up the trail do they want me to go?
As a Money Service Business, Revolut is required to comply with the UK Money Laundering Regulations. These, for larger sums, require them to know where their customers are getting their money from. The legislation mentions €15,000. They have to maintain these records in case of investigation. You have to the same when you buy a house.
I found this under the FAQ section of Revolut page: “Card spending is limited to £30,000 or equivalent per year with a sublimit of £5,000 or equivalent per 96 hours meaning that you cannot exceed £5,000 or equivalent in card spending in a 96 hour period. Cash withdrawals from ATMs are limited to £2,000 or equivalent per day”.
That’s not in the actual FAQ though. Or I couldn’t find it. I did a Google on the quote and it comes up in the Revolut Support Portal, which I don’t have access to. It seems to be an internal Revolut back office thing, which requires a login and password, which I don’t have and there seems no way of getting one.
All I get is “You are not authorised to access this portal. Kindly contact your helpdesk administrator.”
How did you get in to it? Got a link?
CS told me yesterday, when they finally answered me that it’s not £30k, it’s €30k. Left hands and right hands come to mind.
Somebody at Revolut either doesn’t understand the rules or keeps getting confused as the legislation only mentions EUROS or equiv. This is evidenced by the fact that Revolut mention £30k as the limit in one place and €30k in another. I think the 30K is a number chosen by Revolut as the limit, but somebody wasn’t at the meeting which decided in which currency they will choose.
Anyway, I’m stuck with having to provide an audit trail for my own money to meet these rules, but it’s getting a bit Kafkaesque because trying to follow Revolut’s rules when Revolut won’t tell you what the rules are is infuriating.
It’s just that these conditions don’t surprise me. Twice recently I have similar requirements due the these regs. A pension lump sum and an inheritance were withheld by my bank until I provided them with documentation of where the funds came from.
I saw that on the FAQ too. But I wasn’t looking for spending limits.
Card spending is not the same as top up. I don’t spend very much with the card, but I do top up a lot, to transfer to € to send to my French bank to pay my mortgage.
Maybe that’s where the confusion with a 30K limit has started.
Now we are starting to get to the bottom of it.
I’d pretty much worked that out a few minutes ago.
Is this because I used a French phone number to initiate the account?
Because I’m an international person, I would have thought that the currency you top up in would be the base currency.
Anyway I have a document prepared to send to you explaining everything with pay and bank statements.
Can I email a pdf to you or do I have to fight it through the app?
Wehey! :r: have accepted my documents.
New limit applied. A sufficiency of leeway has been achieved. Tiny Tim can have new crutches for Xmas.
Thanks to all who helped me understand the confusing situation.
In summary.
Your top up limit is set individually in your base currency.
Your base currency is determined by your address and phone number.
I have still to determine how exactly :r: works out how much you’ve topped up if you top up in a currency other than your base currency as FOREX rates fluctuate so much. Perhaps they take your top up and apply the FOREX rate at that moment and apply that amount to the limit accounting.
Top-up limits can be raised by applying to :r: with proofs of funding and an audit trail through all bank accounts leading to the :r: top-up. Screen shots of online banking statements are acceptable.
These documents can be compiled in a pdf on any machine, sent to your dropbox account and uploaded through the app.
I have the same problem. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to account limits. I have measly a 13K EUR limit. The invasion of privacy they engage in is outrageous. The original poster is exactly correct, you can deposit six figures into any other “bank” account, no questions asked.
This company is super slimy but also super incompetent. They have no idea what they’re doing their support slow to respond, terrible and clueless. They have no idea what they are doing. They also have very high undisclosed fees. I’ve been charged over 1% FX on the weekend to cover “market fluctuations” (according to them) on currencies that are pegged to the base currency. Revolut is definitely not no fees, they have hidden, in-transparent fees and if you check the exchange rates you’re actually getting you will see they are far from inter-bank rates often times. This is without even considering the high 2% ATM withdrawal fee you’ll pay after the incredibly insufficient cash limit of either the basic or premium plans (oh look, another fee).
Revolut is a terrible company, very incompetent, terrible support, the last thing in the world I’d like to do is give them more personal information!
I completely agree that they lack transparency, especially on the exchange rate applied. There are things you can do to minimize the risk: exchange money on a weekday in app into the currency you want to spend on your card, and check the rate on xe.com before making the exchange. Get another card for cash withdrawals abroad at the MasterCard rate if your main currency is GBP, especially for countries with supposedly “illiquid” currencies (according to Revolut): Loot or Monzo, I believe, offer the MasterCard rate, which is better than Revolut’s for illiquid currencies and sometimes also for liquid ones. And don’t think of Revolut as a bank: it’s not, it’s a prepay card, and should be treated as such until they stop the silliness with arbitrarily capping pre-applied topup limits, etc.
My son, for example, had a £25,000 top-up limit, confirmed in the app. But the moment he added a significant sum to do a foreign-exchange transaction, Revolut immediately blocked the amount and demanded proof of the origin of the funds. After he provided proof, they limited his account to £7,000 total. So, why pretend the top-up limit is £25,000 if it actually isn’t?
Yes but what a hassle. It’s easy to find credit cards that give you as good or often better rates than Revolut and give you some kind of rewards in addition, like airline miles and free rental car insurance, etc. Plus you also get better dispute protection than Revolut or any debit card. I my travels of over 60 countries, I’ve found it’s extremely rare to find somewhere that will take a debit card but not a credit card. In fact there are more examples where the reverse is true such as renting a car or something else that requires a large security deposit; if they would take a debit card for that you wouldn’t want to anyway because it would lock up your cash.
So where then is the benefit of Revolut? Cash withdrawals? Sometimes they give a good rate and sometimes they don’t, the monthly limit is a tiny 200 GBP or even less if they assigned you EUR as a base currency, which they like to do without asking you. They will offer premium for 7.99 which gets you a still very low 400 limit but this is an even worse deal than the first 200 because 7.99 is 4% of the extra 200 limit they’re giving you. And that’s if you actually use the limit every month, if you only travel sometimes and keep paying this monthly fee you can easily be paying the equivalent of over 10% on your withdrawals if you measure it over an annual basis.
I don’t understand how Revolut continues to survive and thrive even on all this hype and the false promises of low and no fees. When they first launched it was an alright product but they started adding more and more fees and lower and lower limits.
There are new cards like this coming on the market all the time, it pays to shop around. Also you can do much better than Revolut with a travel rewards card and just carrying some cash.
My son, for example, had a £25,000 top-up limit, confirmed in the app. But the moment he added a significant sum to do a foreign-exchange transaction, Revolut immediately blocked the amount and demanded proof of the origin of the funds. After he provided proof, they limited his account to £7,000 total. So, why pretend the top-up limit is £25,000 if it actually isn’t?
This seems to be yet another “feature” that’s totally useless when you actually try to use it. So you mean they will interrogate your son about the source of every penny he deposits into the app above the paltry sum of 7K per year? The last thing in the world I’d want is a company this sloppy and incompetent having mountains of my most personal data.
:r: have accepted my documents.
confusing situation.