Hello, wanted to ask community feedback about transfers to China. I need to transfer USD to Postal Savings Bank of China - SWIFT code PSBCCNBJ. My recipient says that transfer from Revolut incurred additional 40 USD fee, but that was year ago. Situation may have changed, so maybe it’s free now, as I transfered recently funds to Hong Kong without any fees. Anyone have up to date information?
Heya 
Bit of a late response (I hope you’ve found your answer already!)
Both sides of the coin have the ability to charge fees for SWIFT transfers
That’s Revolut’s partner bank as well as whatever bank receives it.
This means Revolut can’t accurately tell you about any fees.
This would change if they swapped to sending a SWIFT transfer with OUR as the instruction, which signals the banks that no money can be deducted from the amount sent - meaning whatever you sent would arrive. any fees would be paid on making the transfer in the app!
As one of revolut user,
I sent 10000JPY(~= 550CNY ) to bank of Chengdu(成都银行).
And 500JPY (~= 25CNY) has been charged as intermediary bank fee.
China may be special company and I can understand they charge fee regardless it is by Revolut or others.
but what I don’t like about revolut is not providing any of information, in transfer screen they just show “no fee” without any other details like link to terms page.
Anyway I don’t recommend to use revolut to send money to China.
This is due to the way Revolut sends money over the SWIFT system (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications). They send it through a method which is “send X amount and deduct costs along the way”.
The SWIFT network essentially doesn’t require direct connections between banks, so what happens is several banks might be involved in a transaction. For example lets take Bank of Chengdu.
Revolut will send this transfer instruction to their partner which is connected to SWIFT. They will then check if they have a direct connection to Chengdu Bank. If they don’t they’ll send it to another bank that does that they do have a connection with.
Naturally, everyone wants their cut from the change of hands, they don’t work for free. So what happens is because Revolut doesn’t choose to send transfers as “send this exact amount in JPY”, the banks deduct the fee from the money, instead of Revolut collecting the fee in advance.