Background story (I am yet again disappointed in Revolut’s overpromise and underdelivery):
I used Revolut last few months to convert some of my savings to EUR and buy some cryptocurrencies. Eventually, once bitcoin hits the moon, I (and anyone else trading in this fools’ gold) expect to become a millionaire and pull some profits back into my national currency.
Revolut has actually several hidden usage limits for your account. One of them is, yearly transfer limit of £25k. They don’t say what happens when you hit the limit, but presumably they freeze your account and you lose money if anyone makes a transfer in when you’re locked out.
Revolut states you need to provide evidence of your source of income to raise the limit. I submitted the requested documents. They came back saying, not enough documents, give us bank statements for 3 months. So I did. Then they complained it’s not enough - we need more evidence, give us your yearly tax return. (At this point you realise you’re dealing with a time waster).
In the end Revolut refused to raise my limit, despite me showing them flow through my accounts for the last few months way above £25k, saying that my salary is not high enough. Huh? When/where do you say one needs to be on a bank board member salary to be granted a privilege of not facing a looming account block?
If Revolut want to be seen as a serious player in the banking ecosystem, Revolut will need to realise that there’s more to it than people paying for their avocado sandwiches. £25k/year transfer limit might look like a lot, but actually it’s not even median income threshold in many countries. Add to that moving your savings, sending/receiving money from family abroad, and the limit is laughable.
Fortunately I managed to find some alternatives to Revolut (to show you competition is strong out there - why do you make it so hard to use your service?):
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Transferwise (free multicurrency debit card, free bank account numbers for EUR, UK, US, Australia, no daily/monthly/yearly limit on the amount of money you can hold, convert and transfer) - At the moment I use Transferwise for currency exchange. https://transferwise.com/u/piotro50 (get a signup bonus while you’re at it!)
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Fire Bank (free EUR, UK bank account, free debit card, altho they charge small fee for card transactions). I use them to store some of my euro and transfer to/from cryptocurrency exchange
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Denizen.io - I can’t wait for them to become available in the UK. Free, no limits, clean and simple - that’s how Revolut should look like (instead I’m supposed to pay £5 for a debit card when it’s free pretty much everywhere else, 2.5% for each cryptocurrency trade when the most expensive cryptocurrency exchange would charge you max 0.25%?). For now Denizen is available in US, Germany and Spain, but fingers crossed for the rest of the Europe.
Why am I writing all of this? I appreciate Revolut’s efforts, but I’m disappointed by all the focus on marketing stunts making big promises, but delivering limits, lockdowns and sudden charges (hello cryptocurrency feature…). If you want more, just look at the business account model… £25-£1000 per month for a business account? Mine is free elsewhere with all the functionality…
Someone summed all of this nice here:
“The problem with revolut is they do not understand UK business. We are a partnership and they will not recognise this without a certificate from the registration office .Neither of which exist. So we registered as a sole trader free lancer. Then it comes out that with our turnover they will only take limited companies. They are difficult and tedious to deal with hampered by their lack of understanding and sometimes I think they are using Google translate to reply. Shame because the foreign currency exchange is great.”