I’m pretty much new to Revolut. After spending a bit of time searching the community forums and not quite finding the answers I was looking for I decided I should make a post.
My question is this; what is the purpose to holding multiple currencies in your account? Do I need to use the exchange option and convert my money into say for example EUR if I intend to travel to a country using Euros? or will I be able to just keep GBP on my account and let Revolut do the currency exchange automatically?
I’m just trying to work out the best way to use the card and I’m not sure whether I should exchange currencies or just leave it in my account in £s.
If somebody knows a place in the FAQ where this is covered or another topic covering this please send me a link.
Hi
I have Australian dollars and Indian rupees at the moment as I have trips planned to both countries. The rupee is stable but the aus dollar has dropped 15cents since I started checking and buying. But it’s a personal option. You can keep your money in GBP and you’ll get the rate on the day when you use your card.
Hope that helps.
The card can be used to convert at the interbank exchange rate at the point of purchase.
At the same time, if you want to ‘lock in’ a certain rate (e.g. You hold £s and you think that, due to a deteriorating economic situation or/and a higher chance of a ‘hard’ Brexit happening, the £ will fall in value. And therefore you want to exchange to a different currency. You would in anticipation of this, exchange your £s for $s or €s, for example.), you can by exchanging at the interbank exchange rate at the time of exchange.
One of the best things about Revolut is that you can exchange money from your home currency to the currency in which you will be spending. It is extremely unlikely that the exchange rate will be optimal at the time you choose to transact with a merchant. Therefore always exchange money to the destination currency in advance. The most liquid times and consequently the best rates will be during business hours of the destination currency. Avoid weekends when the FX markets are closed with no live prices; Revolut gives you Friday’s closing rate with a markup of at least 0.5% to protect itself against any movement before Monday morning.
By watching the exchange rate over several days, you should be able to pick an optimal time to buy your destination currency. The only time you should spend in a supported balance currency directly from your home currency is when the destination currency is devaluing fast intraday. If your home currency is devaluing fast (as has happened with GBP), then buying your destination currency in advance becomes even more important.
A personal experience. I usually travel a lot on weekends on Hungary from Austria. Now with HUF account I exhanged HUF on Thursday and on Friday avoiding the 1% markup!!! Great. I saved money and is a good feeling… Thanks to Revolut… And really using the card was charged in HUF… A really good experience… To avoid the weekend markup its excellent to have multiple currency account. Actually sometime wud be great as well have multiple currency saving account to park money in a different currency - but helping international traveller Revolut is fantastic!!!
If you are in a Eurozone country, or the transaction itself is in Euro (like a web shop), the transaction should be charged automatically in EUR.
Attention! Some ATMs and shops (POS terminal) may ask if you want to be charged in Euro or in GBP (as the card is issued in the UK, and probably your base currency is also in GBP).
If you are in an Euro country, ALWAYS choose euros, otherwise they will convert the Euro amount to GBP in a very very bad rate (probably 10% worse than the rate you get in Revolut), and they take it from your balance in GBP in your Revolut, thus defeating the whole purpose of this app.
This is called dynamic currency conversion (DCC) and you can read a lot about in on the internet.
So if asked whether to pay in EUR or GBP always EUR (of course only in the Euro countries)
I have Revolut balances in GBP (my base currency), EUR and USD.
I’m about to travel to the USA. When I use my Revolut card, will Rvolut automatically transact in USD via my USD balance, or do I need to do something within the app to make this happen (or doesn’t it work that way at all)?
Also, if my spend is, say $50 but my Revolut USD balance is only $40, what happens? Does Revolut use the $40 then exchange the reminder from my base GBP account, or something else?
