Remove 0.5%/1% weekend markup for card purchases by delaying FX until Monday's WMR 4pm London fix

Who cares about the weekend markup anyway? It won’t change so deal with it. Either exchange beforehand or use a different card. It’s not hard to avoid.

I agree that one should always exchange beforehand. The rate at the time of a transaction is almost never going to be the best rate. It’s far better to use orders (“auto-exchange”) to achieve the best rate possible. But you haven’t given a solution for using Revolut at weekends in currencies in which Revolut does not support balances. See my example above of BRL, where I used another card at weekends, losing business for Revolut.

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I think it always depends on how much you want to optimize something.

Personally I don’t bother with it. I use the card anyway. It’s a free product so I just accept that.

The ideas forum on this community, in which I created this thread, is for suggesting improvements to Revolut. Are you saying you don’t agree with the purpose of this forum?

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Man, that’s cold coming from you. :sweat_smile:

What if your limit wasn’t reached, and now you have to exchange at an even worse rate? Am I missing something about this feature? To me this is just a way to make sure you won’t exchange at a bad rate due to random fluctuation, but I doubt the regular Revoluter is a forex geek, how does everyone get “the best rate possible”?

Back on topic (@Regalia) It is more work to create a budget for the weekend and exchange beforehand. Also, you have to exchange more than what you will possibly use, which means that you will have to exchange back the excess money (another transaction, currency risk).

Absolutely. But it would be nice if there wasn’t a tradeoff and Revolut just offered rates without artificial markup.Especially when you can’t exchange beforehand and the markup is 1%.

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Indeed, but that cost of doing that will usually be less than 0.5% or 1%. I always make a profit when doing this - again using orders (“auto-exchange”). For example, earlier this year I had a business trip to Norway, so I changed GBP 100 to NOK for personal expenditure. Because everything was so expensive in Norway, I didn’t have any personal expenditure, and changed all the NOK back to GBP 103.

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I guess that’s the price you pay for having a free product.

It’s not a free product. Merchants pay a commission to accept card payments, part of which is paid to Revolut, which in turn funds Revolut’s service. Revolut’s customers ultimately fund this commission, because it is included within the price of the goods or services sold by merchants. Revolut is most definitely not offering a service for zero revenue, even though it operates FX mostly for zero revenue in order to incentivise revenue-earning card transactions.

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Of course it is. You don’t pay any recurring fees unlike your other banks or?

That some services cost a little more is to be expected but you are not forced to use them, or?

Haha😂, so you should be thankful that everything was that expensive.

Regarding the exchange: was there so much intra-day fluctuation, or were you just lucky that rates changed in your favor?

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Well, I’m on a Metal plan, so for me it is not. But even on the free plan, some people pay with their data (hint hint), and the 0.3-2% Revolut receives on every transaction is something the cardholder could give someone else, including themselves (using cash back cards). So, yes, there is no subscription fee, but you earn them money that you could spend elsewhere, and there are opportunity costs. So I’d say people have the right to feel entitled.

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I wasn’t in a rush to sell GBP/NOK before going or to buy GBP/NOK after returning, so I created orders so that when the market spiked in one direction, my order was filled. I wasn’t particularly lucky that my orders were filled, but I could have been unlucky if they hadn’t been. The 3% profit (as opposed to maybe 0.5% or 1%) was indeed very lucky. The best approach is just to create an order around 0.5% away from the current market rate and wait for a small spike to happen.

That’s not a valid point. You pay with your data too and you’re a Metal user. :wink:

That also is not a valid point. You would have spent the money anyway and every bank earns with a transaction.

The point here is that you are suggesting that, because Revolut is offering a free product, it needs to generate revenue somewhere such as weekend markups. I am responding that this is incorrect, because Revolut generates revenue on transactions on every day of the week, including Monday ro Friday when FX markets are open; the revenue comes from merchants.

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But I could have spent it with a different card. e.g.:

Every payment you make with your American Express will earn you 1% cashback, while 0.2% is reimbursed for payments made with your World Mastercard or Visa.

and earned money (these cards are free as well). Relatively speaking, using Revolut I lose money every day, which means it is not free if opportunity costs are factored in.

BTW, I think they offer great services in return. I like the app very much. And FX rates on weekdays are great too. But their weekend markup makes it more cumbersome and/or expensive than it could be, and it is not because it’s a free product and they have to do it, but because they just chose to do so.

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@resolut makes some good points about loss of points, cashback and airmiles etc. But I get the best of both worlds by loading my Revolut in GBP with a UK points-earning credit card, then creating an order to buy the destination currency at an optimal rate and then spending from the destination currency balance. If it’s a currency in which Revolut doesn’t support balances, then I use Tandem at weekends and get the MasterCard daily rate with 0.5% cashback.

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And you can choose to use a different service. It’s your own free will.

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The purpose of this Ideas forum is not to encourage others to use a different service, but to suggest ways of improving Revolut so that people won’t use a different service.

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