I read that the Vietnam rates during the week can be poor and you only get the correct rate between 4 to 9 pm or something confusing like that in a google search. It was an old post so maybe that’s history ?
Hey DJ. Since Revolut is London based their trading hours for currencies follow the London time zone. That means that when the trading closes in London friday evening the weekend surcharge will kick in.
More information can be found in the help centre:
Yes I know about the weekend increases, however I read on an old post that weekday rates can be poor! Unless transactions are between 4 to 9 pm.
Does that sound possible to you?
Sounds like it shouldn’t happen.
Yeah, its always a bit worse than the rates on XE/Google, I just bought some stuff now (2pm UK time) and it was about 1.5% worse. Perhaps after 4pm it’s better, I haven’t checked much. Definitely still better than using the credit card my bank issues.
Also some advice, if you need to take out cash, MB Bank don’t charge for that, most others will have a 1% or 2% surcharge.
Thanks. When u say surcharge do you mean ATM fee or other charge?
I think that Google/XE shows the mid market rate and not the buy/sell rate.
Here is a blog post explaining how Revolut works and what the interbank rate is:
Ah okay, that’s fair enough then. Thanks for the info.
@dj45 yeah ATM fees, usually the bank will tell you when you’re taking money out, and it might be about 30000 dong or so, but MB bank has never charged me anything.
Do you have a Visa or MasterCard? I have a MasterCard and I’m wondering if the brand relates to the charges? I’ve heard that a Canadian owned bank in Vietnam doesn’t charge either.
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Hello,
I would like to share my experience on that topic and maybe I will obtain some answers from you as the client support definitely can’t give me a straight answer.
Since 3 weeks, I started to notice something strange with the VND rate during the day. It seems than before 1:30pm (Vietnamese Time) either Revolut or their partner apply a 2% mark-up during the week (which is actually more than the weekend mark-up).
Please see the pictures from today, just before and just after 1:30pm
As you can see there is a jump of 400 points…
At first Revolut told me this was normal fluctuations of the rate as it is live. This is clearly wrong as I have monitored it for 3 weeks and keep telling them everyday (I actually have pictures before/after from different days if you want).
Moreover you can see on the graph that the rate is far below the minimum of the day (the pic is from yesterday 1:20pm, for another example)
One week ago, one of Revolut employee finally acknowledge there was an issue
Calling it a technical issue and told me they will work on it.
But the same things keep on happening and his colleague provided me this time with various weird, to be polite, explanations such as this is how the system is set up, this a normal fluctuation of the rate, you have to wait for the bank opening in the region to have liquidity (they open at 8am, thank you for the worst explanation ever).
This is not random as it happens at the same hour everyday. We only get the right interbank rate for a few hours a day, and the rest of the time they apply a mark up of 2%.
I can definitely understand the weekend mark up but this one looks like almost a scam…Revolut advertises on no fees and real rates and this is definitely not what we are getting.
In fact with this 2% mark up, using my french mastercard before 1:30pm is more interesting for me…
Revolut keeps on telling me that this is not a mark up they apply but this is the real rate of the day…I have trouble understanding this. Or is Morningstar applying a mark up to Revolut everyday ?
does anyone has some kind of input ?
Sorry for the long post and thank you very much in advance.
Kind regards,
Quentin