If you don’t have any information about ATM fees of a specific bank or want to find “a cheapest bank” for ATM cash withdrawal in a specific country you can use the method below to find the bank that charges no fee or a bank with a minimum fee along many banks charging a transaction fee, for the ATM cash withdrawal when using your Revolut Visa card (standard plan).
Please note that some ATM’s will charge you transaction fee without any notice !
Remove all funds from your Revolut account (if you have any)
Go to several local banks and try to withdraw a fixed amount of local currency at their ATM’s (e.g. 5000 GMD, if you are in Gambia). The transactions will be, of course, unsuccessful, as your account is empty.
Connect your phone to Internet.
Open Revolut app on your phone and check/compare all the latest (unsuccessful) transactions.
Pay attention to the “Charged by ATM” amount.
If the amount is equal to the fixed amount that you were trying to withdraw, there is no additional fee (e.g. 5000 GMD in case of Gambia)
If the amount is higher than the amount of money you were trying to withdraw then the difference is the fee charged by the bank ATM (e.g. 5250 GMD in Gambia means the ATM fee is 250 GMD)
Now by analysing the fees you can easily choose the bank with no fee or with a low/acceptable fee
Hm, maybe this triggers fraud detection, but why close the account?
That’s typically the case if T&Cs are violated or the account owner used the account for illegal activities. This points more towards lost or stolen cards. Revolut doesn’t close the account when this happens to you. And I don’t see any obvious things like it being costly for Revolut or something. But that‘s actually an interesting question: who pays for processing of all the declined transactions on card networks? I don’t know.
(I think the method is a creative solution for a problem. But it’s too much work for me. I don’t want to run around like that to not get money.)
This is slightly off topic, but I thought it might be interesting.
I know about an internal explorative data mining project at a bank where they used a very similar approach. They wanted to know how many of their customers actually pay ATM fees, and where: on vacation, or in places where they live.
They looked at anonymized transaction data for ATM withdrawals, and assumed that all odd amounts are a result of fees. Like 504 GBP would be 4 GBP fees. ATMs are identifiable, and their locations are often publicly available. They were able to link transactions to a map, at least in some areas quite easily.
This might be the method Revolut uses for indicating ATM fees: “Based on historical data, we estimate that you will not pay a surcharge” they say.
I have been wondering for quite a while how Revolut knows about fees in the ATM search in the HUB. I have an “Berliner Sparkasse” ATM next to my flat, 0€ fee for withdrawals as specified in the ATM search, but who provides this information, customers or an internal evaluation of transactions? Other “Berliner Sparkasse” ATMs are often specified with “Unknown” for possible fees.
This makes sense but not every few consecutive unsuccessful transactions necessarily mean a fraud attempt. I suggested to empty Revolut account but the same applies for withdrawing more money that you actually have on your account.
Having some amount of money on your account and trying to withdraw exactly that amount of money in different currency, but without knowing that there is an ATM fee or how big that ATM fee is, will make you try to withdraw your money several times until you lower the withdrawal amount to the level that transaction is eventually successful.
So then the ATM fee fits into the equation: withdrawal amount + ATM fee = amount of money on your account.
I think that Revolut keeps account with this kind of situation and several unsuccessful transactions are allowed, but how many? What is the limit?
I hope that Revolut uses much more sophisticated logic then this one to detect a fraud and for our security it is better it’s not shared on this forum
Of course, I wouldn’t use it every day. but only in exceptional situations.
Besides, I was using this method for a few years and without any problems so far
I would first try to search this forum for other users experience, then try the available ATM info in the Revolut app under the Hub. If both fail to clarify the ATM fee, what else to do?
Two years ago in Senegal I paid about 50% of a “silent” ATM fee as compared to the amount of money being withdrawn and without any notification from the ATM.
This is not something you want to repeat…
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Thanks for sharing that with us.
