I completely understand why you need to do this, but how about refunding any difference between the mark-up and the rate Revolut was able to achieve when the markets reopen?
At the moment, in order to avoid this mark-up, I have to estimate how much money I will spend in a foreign currency on the weekend, and do the exchange on Friday. It’s pretty annoying if I guess wrong, or forget to exchange before the markets close. I would feel a lot better about getting a “bad” rate on the weekend–and therefore better about using Revolut–if I know the difference will be refunded. (I assume you’re not actually trying to make money from this arrangement.)
As an aside, an easy way to figure out whether the mark-up is in operation is to use the rate converter feature to convert between e.g. GBP and USD, and tap each of the currencies a few times to change the “direction” of the exchange. If you still end up with almost as much as you started with after a few round trips, the markets are open.
This way you don’t have to think about whether the markets are actually open (is it a public holiday??), according to Revolut’s definition.
But, if I am understanding correctly, that would possibly imply that you’d also have to pay for the difference if :r: finally gets a worse exchange rate than the one they offered you…
I was thinking it would work exactly as it does now, except that you get a refund on the difference when the markets reopen—i.e. you never need to pay more than you did on the weekend.
As well as being “fairer”, this would also simplify the FAQ questions around this, and minimize complaints about being charged the “wrong” rate.
What do you mean by blocked? I definitely want to be able to exchange currency by some mechanism when the exchanges are closed, even if I have to pay a mark-up.
At now money/payment is debited with some mark-up. Why not same way as in other banks, during “no open hours” money only blocked and debited when is market open …
So you’re suggesting that the way it works is that if I withdraw 100USD over the weekend, what I pay in GBP is whatever the exchange rate is on Monday morning?
The end result seems exactly the same as my suggestion? (Unless the exchange rate is dramatically different on Monday than on Friday, in which case it’s worse.)
For card payments, yes. That’s how cards usually work, like you said. With Revolut, you can also exchange money and then send it via P2P when markets aren’t open. The money is available for the receiver in real-time and not after credit card settlement. This wouldn’t work like it does right now when conversion would be limited like you suggested.
I think this would be a good idea. If the rate during the weekend is worse than the one on Monday (and therefore Revolut didn’t have any losses), then it would make sense to refund the difference to the consumer.
I assume Revolut suspend the currency exchange if something unusual happens when the markets are closed (a coup?) and it looks like they’ll make a loss when they reopen. So as it stands Revolut is basically guaranteed to make money on weekend exchanges. Of course it’s fine for a business to want to make money, but this doesn’t seem like a good way of doing it!
How about the way N26 do it? They give you an estimate and when the account is actually debited it shows you the amount they actually charged. It also nicely shows both on the screen so you can tell the difference.
Edit: this would be quite fair on both us and Revolut, we pay what it actually costs and Revolut don’t absorb any cost, nor do they pocket any cost.
@Recchan, you make an excellent point. This is one of the reasons that I won’t use Revolut for non-balance currencies, because I want something that works all week, including the weekend. Instead I use a credit card that uses the MasterCard rate in arrears with no markup.
This would be easy if currency conversion would be limited to card payments. But with Revolut, it also affects P2P payments and transfers and in app conversions. Since all these services are also available in realtime over the weekend, there‘s no way for Revolut to protect accounts from running into negative balance. Under current regulations, their e-money wallets can’t allow overdrafts. N26 operates with a full banking licence, offers P2P only in one’s base currency and uses Transferwise for payments in foreign currencies.
I don‘t like the weekend markup, but I do acknowledge that it helps providing a free service that is very cheap under most circumstances and can be avoided with a little bit of effort for many popular currencies.
And any way of implementing it differently would complicate the way how the product is designed: unbundling conversion from all other transaction services and making it available in real time.
