Why not a partnership with the SIBS network in Portugal?
In portugal there is an ATM network in which very small merchants use instead of the Visa network or mastercard. And that makes it impossible for Portugal to use the cards. Only major merchants accept the Visa and Mastercard network.
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Hello, fellow Portuguese
That would indeed be ‘ouro sobre azul’ as we usually say. To be honest, I highly doubtful that will happen because:
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Revolut’s banking licence doesn’t seem to be active just yet, and SIBS would most likely deny doing business with Revolut without said licence up and running
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I doubt that the lovely bunch of traditional banks currently operating in Portugal would let this happen. As soon as news spread, there would be a fair amount of pressure in boycotting Revolut’s entrance in the Portuguese market in any ‘oficial’ way, with or without a baking licence.
But one can dream and hope. I would be happy enough with Google/Apple Pay being introduced as a competition to SIBS, but that’s also unlikely to happen in the next years (if ever).
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Revolut don’t really like caving into local payment methods when acceptance for mastercard and visa is becoming more commonplace (obviously with an exception of maestro as this is still popular in quite a few countries)