I would like to suggest that Revolut is more transparent with fees. When one makes an international money transfer, it is normal to compare Revolut’s offering with other providers, such as TransferWise. What is compared is the final amount that takes into account the exchange rate and all fees etc.
I have happily made transfers with Revolut from GBP to USD for the last two years, often for amounts over $6000.
But in March, I transferred £5000 and was told before transfer that I would receive $6482. But my US bank only had $6463 credited, and a $15 fee imposed. So I lost $36 altogether. I would prefer to be told this before I make the transfer.
The issue was that it went over as SWIFT rather than ACH. But I have no control over this, and all the previous transfers (for similar amounts) went through as ACH.
Revolut chat explains:
As it has been processed as an international transfer, it must have been sent through an intermediary bank, which charged the fee for taking part in the process. On our end there are no charges applied, so that would have to be the case. Previous transfers were under 5000 USD, which allows us to send them as ACH, while higher amounts go through a different route (SWIFT) which ended up being processed through an intermediary and applying fees by them. This is not entirely up to us, the ACH are being handled by one of our payment processors and it is up to their internal policies to accept USD transfers as ACH. It is guaranteed to go that way up to 5000 USD and, apparently, it could work as well for slightly higher amounts but not certain to be always available. The fees have not been charged by our processor, it’s the intermediary bank that works with your bank.
I copied this verbatim, but it contains an error. The comment “Previous transfers were under 5000 USD” is wrong - they were all over $5000.
Please can we have extra transparency at the time the transfer is requested? Something like a message saying “You might lose some of your money if you make this transfer and the receiving bank may impose a fee.”
I have just done another transfer for under $5000 and it went through fine - no hidden fees or charges, and the full amount got transferred.
It shows that Revolut does work, but it is really disappointing that they won’t warn customers about this. Basically, if you transfer over $5000, you risk losing money, up to $35. It is really not on to trick customers about this. But they still remain the cheapest so I guess they will just get away with it.
Actually I lost $70 on a transfer that I did over $5000 (after a previous test transfer for $2 succeeded)
I contacted Revolut support to try to understand what the actual limit is and whether it has changed since other threads in this forum have discussed this problem.
They said “Our transfer processor partners don’t share these limits with us”
Anyone who knows about the $5000 thing will split up their transfers in future, but the point is that if you don’t know about it then you may lose money (up to $70). I don’t think that is a good way to treat customers.
SWIFT transfers are most of the time affected by fees from intermediate banks that deduct them from the amount they forward to the next one. Even the originating and final bank might take a share.
This makes it unpredictable in any case.
All these fintech companies offer money transfer within their eco systems for free. There are very few companies offering transfer services with a better predictability outside their own boundaries. At the moment, only TransferWise pops into my head but even there I would assume you could fall victim of SWIFT fees.
The only way around is to use a national banking system which often is cheaper if not free. But as you know, this is not always feasible as you would need a local account.
I see that the one thing Revolut is good at is holding different currency and using them for card payments.
All other stuff, like paying bills, transferring money to a bank account etc seem to be outsourced and not really under their control and knowledge how it’s handled form case to case meaning transfer to transfer.
This has been always the case and still seems to be it. Sad, as they claim to be more, which they obviously are not.
I agree it should be more transparent and advise everyone who would like to make international transfer to just use transferwise instead of revolut. I understand Revolut does not charge anything. But for customer, we do not really care who charges how much, we look at the total transfer fee. Even Revolut and the recipient bank are not charging anything, if the intermediary bank charges, there is still a transfer fee to us. and using Revolut to make international transfer is obviously not “0 transfer fee” as it is impossible to make international payment without any intermediary bank I guess. Even though they have already stated on the app that “intermediary banks” could charge a fee, it is not transparent at all. They could not provide even the range or capped fee for international transfer.
I know it’s not Revolut to blame as they said they have no control over the route using within Swift system. But as customer, I will choose transferwise in this case just to avoid Swift.
In principle, you are right. But this is not always true:
Depending on the specific route and parties involved, international transfer can be free. There are a couple of reports in this forum about specific connections where no fee occurred. But it’s complicated. Sending 1000 USD might be free, 1001 not any more.
It might be safe for your specific route. It’s not for other routes. There’s no general rule here, unfortunately. That’s why a very specific warning in the app is hard to provide: Revolut would have to collect data about thousands of fees for very specific sender-receiver pairs in all countries and currencies. And then this might change all the time. Sounds like a customer support nightmare to me when Revolut can’t guarantee that all this information is up to date.
