What is the situation with the MCC for topup?

Hello all,

On reddit or twitter, there are some feedback about the MCC change that lead people to pay fee for cash advance. Is it the new official position of Revolut? Or is it a temporary situation?

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I did not hear of it yet.
What’s MCC?

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What is (according to Twitter/Reddit) the new (temporary) MCC or description for top up?

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According to a reddit post:

It was 6012 (Financial institutions merchandise and services) before, and they changed it to 4829(Wire Transfer - Money Orders).

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I see now why I got charged a 1.5% fee from my credit card top-up, while it was free before!

@daniel9: 1.5% charged by Revolut or by your bank?

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1.5% is the issuer’s fee for “payment abroad” regardless of used currency (Revolut would charge ~1.8% if you use a Swiss issued card but are not a Swiss resident).

Charged by my local CHF credit card.

Yes, for payment abroad, but this wasn’t the case until recently. The top up was considered CHF locally before.
I never quite understood the rationale for the 1.5% fee “abroad” when it’s in the same currency?

milking the customers for profit :man_shrugging:

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Damn, it would be even worse. Imagine paying 1.5% abroad fee + cash advance fee of the credit card.

@Daidai @daniel9

Ok, but has this fee anything to do with the change of MCC, or is this fee because of Brexit?

We can only guess. But since there is just “Switzerland” (local) and “other countries”, Brexit doesn’t matter. There is no special treatment for EU as seen from Switzerland.

Therefore it must be the MCC as even people from other european countries had fees applied by the card issuers recently.

Ok, but a 1.5% issuer’s fee for “payment abroad” regardless of used currency, because of a change in MCC, seems odd to me.

The fees reported by others, that I have seen, are cash advance fees.

Sentence from @daniel9 on THIS topic:

“Apparently Mastercard changed Revolut’s MCC. It was 6012 (Financial institutions merchandise and services) before, and they changed it to 4829 (Wire Transfer - Money Orders).”

Might be the reason…

What I heard is that the top-up isn’t considered as online payment anymore (which is always free) but cash withdrawal according to new the coding.

This means that these transactions cost money. Especially if it’s done by credit cards or if the bank puts any charges on the cash withdrawals.

So in my understanding it may affect all Revolut clients not only the ones in Switzerland…

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It may seem odd to you but credit card issuers are no charities. They work on fees generated everywhere. They do not provide a service without having somebody pay for it.
Every issuer may apply as many fees as they want for any MCC for any reason.

I think you are misunderstanding me…

Please also check the first part of the sentence you have quoted.

The fact a fee is charged (because of a change in MCC) is not odd to me. The ‘fact’ it is a fee for “payment abroad” regardless of used currency (instead of a cash advance fee), given it was not charged previously, I find odd.

It doesn’t matter. They apply a fee based on the MCC. Nothing odd. End of story.

Every issuer may apply as many fees as they want for any MCC for any reason.