Revolut chat

I signed up for a new account the otherday and it won’t let me get a single physical card without paying for it or going premium so it sounds like this has changed since you all signed up

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You have to remove/delete the virtual card to get free physical card. Delivery charges still apply even for the first card. And if you decided to not go ahead with physical card you can create virtual card again free of charge.

Ah, but it still wants me to sign up to premium when ordering with free delivery:
Screenshot_20171210-211937

IIRC delivery was also £5 which doesn’t impress me much

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So, after two days of wanting to close down my account, I finally managed to get it done. The customer support over the app managed to not reply to me for two full days. The way I managed to reach them was via Twitter, which is pretty astonishing if you start dealing with your personal banking stuff over Twitter. I have been active on their forum for the last two days because I wanted to get an idea what is going on and it seems like at the moment there is no support at all because they are being flooded with complaints about the Crypto launch and exchange rip off.

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I signed up to Revolut a couple of weeks ago as for the last few months I’ve been working outside the UK, getting paid in EUR. I wanted to try Revolut as I could hold a balance in EUR, so wouldn’t be burned by exchange rates if I transferred to Monzo, then paid with that.

Here are my thoughts:

  • Signup process was painless, it took just over a week for the card to arrive (outside the UK).
  • Holding multiple currencies is really nice feature. Next month my wife is going to India, so I signed her up too and will convert some spending money to Rupees before she goes. When she comes back, I can convert whatever is left over back into EUR or GBP.
  • For transferring money back to the UK, their rates are better than TransferWise.
  • Virtual cards seem a bit pointless, especially as you have to pay €6 for each virtual card.
  • I see no reason to pay for a premium account, their free usage limits are more than enough for my usage (unless you want to withdraw cash from an ATM).
  • The crypto part of the app just seems to be them jumping on the hype train.
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According to the daily mail they added 200,000 users in just over 3 weeks (Revolut announced 1m on 27/11 and daily mail state 1.2m on 21/12. Are they cooking the books or has the crypto bandwagon given them more fuel?

Given the current cryptocurrency madness (please remember a *coin is just the solution to a piece of complex maths that has no practical purpose… Cryptocurrency is an environmental nightmare and has no backing to provide any stability; thus I don’t feel too bad about calling it madness), I suspect that really would get them a lot of signups.

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Not a crypto person myself (generally the same reasons as Allie) but 200k crypto users in weeks is so impressive - that is, if you believe the daily mail’s accuracy of reporting :thinking: and you believe a fair proportion of those are real users and not just crypto bubble signups who saw it was a premium feature and went elsewhere never to return.

If you do believe those numbers are valid then it is astonishing performance. Those are not users looking to benefit from loss leaders like the free forex that has fuelled most challengers until now. They are users wanting to use new tech and new models, users with money and a very high risk tolerance - surely a very valuable user to be able to cross sell to.

If their £300m valuation was on the back of 600k ‘freebie’ users over a couple of years, then this new velocity -if sustainable for a period of months rather than weeks -would put them in unicorn territory with VCs imho.

As much as I hate their smug marketeers and their inept customer service - they are the ones who look set to be the “(insert tech giant) of banking” at this moment in time. There are obviously room for other success stories but Revolut are just owning fintech right now - too hot to handle!

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users with money and a very high risk tolerance

I’d say a lot of those would be inexperienced people jumping on the crypto craze hoping to make a quick buck, and burning themselves in the process (because to be honest, if you’ve got any kind of crypto experience you’d know there are better and more reliable places to trade it than Revolut). I doubt those users would be a long-term asset to Revolut as they’ll most likely all leave once either they burn all their money or the crypto hype dies down.

Also how do you know those are users with big money? I think the most likely explanation is just people hearing about the crypto hype but will only ever put down like 50£ or 100£ on it, which means in terms of fees Revolut isn’t profiting much off that (and the measly profits they’d make would be lost the second those users do something stupid and open up a support query, which would cost them the equivalent of hours of a customer support employee’s time and thus offset the profits).

I had a look at their forums again and it is just dreadful, I feel bad for the entire Fintech scene as those guys seem just as bad as the legacy banks and will make most people associate Fintech with shit and not look back. I give Starling a lot of hell for their unreliable third-party card processor but at the very least that’s somewhat out of their control, but Revolut and their account blocks are there by design and every day some users complain about being stranded abroad with no access to their money. :-1:

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Yeah - Revolut’s service levels are an absolute “shit show” - a phrase used by Revolut’s Head of Global Brand and Communications Chad West to describe British Airways on Twitter.this week :anguished: (people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones).

Their growth on the other hand is unbelievable. By offering the least customer service and not even having to send a card out without being paid for -they are able to be really nimble and just go where they want.

Revolut are definitely the ‘hare’ in this race. Monzo are the tortoise and there are bunch of snails at the back :smile:

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Revolut has tons of marketing, charges for cards, and offers horrendous customer service. Where’s the appeal, exactly?

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I’ve had a great experience with Revolut, in comparison to many. I’ve had to work within their limits (which are clearly advertised).

I believe their crypto move is definitely a hype train jump, which seems to have worked. If they can keep 10% of customers who jumped on to use their other products it’s a win😉 knowing a tiny bit about crypto, and having used many services and now theirs. It’s defintely not a fully functioning exchange nor is it a personal wallet. It is currently really just a place where you can buy crypto and hope it goes up to either continue to hold or exchange back into a normal currency if you want). I’m assuming this may change if there is a lot of traction and their 1.5% fee provides a good revenue stream for them.

I’ve bought very small amounts with them and lost some money since, but it all worked perfectly :wink:

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I have had nothing but great experiences with Revolut. Yes, I did verify myself straight away and all that jazz, so I haven’t encountered any issues of the account being frozen. Even when I contacted customer services to cancel Revolut Premium it was done quickly.

I use Revolut mainly for foreign transfers, however here are some more positives:

  • Visa debit cards: These are slowly replacing the MasterCards and I never had any acceptance problems with Visa debit unlike MasterCard debit.
  • Foreign transfers: Cheaper than Transferwise as they don’t charge a transaction fee and rate is ‘settled’ straight away instead of waiting 3 days or whatever it is.
  • Euro IBAN
  • Money held in desired currency - currency fluctuation since Brexit, you can lock currency at you desired price for a holiday.
  • Same analytics like Monzo.
  • Hide transactions from feed.
  • Turn off magnetic strip for payments, ATM withdrawals or online transactions separately in the options.
  • Crypto I guess too, but I don’t have premium.

Yes they have downsides just like other provider, but they do beat Monzo in some aspects and Monzo beat them in others. In the end it is healthy competition for other fintechs and the big banks.

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A Revolut and Monzo merger would be a pretty interesting move…

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That would bring in soooo many people looking for a travel/cash card, no thanks. :joy:

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Did you see the interview with Tom, the N26 CEO and the revolut CEO? I’d say it’s unlikely :wink:

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Yeah I think the Revolut funder was possibly nervous which made him come across as really defensive and aloof. He definitely was the least personable out of the three on stage.

The rest of the people on stage looked and sounded super confident about their respective company offerings as they should be!

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Revolut definitely has an unique selling point with cryptocurrencies but in that presentation the founder did a really bad job at presenting that; he has a killer product (at least on the crypto front - Revolut unfortunately has other issues which still make the product bad IMO) but completely screwed up presenting it and making it attractive to potential investors and customers.

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If I was a investor I would definitely invest in N26 as the founder was really switched on to what he and his company wanted to do. The fact he had a base in so many different countries did not hurt either. :slightly_smiling_face:

Tom of course was excellent and very concise but you could tell that out of the 2 (Monzo and N26) his was the younger company. As for the third guy on the stage. No just no! :man_facepalming:

One thing I disagree with is that the N26 founder was saying it’s not so much about the competition between the fintech banks, it’s more about taking market share from the legacy banks. I think that’s untrue as of course they will be taking market share off of each other but it will not be huge amounts. It will still be a problem that all providers have to evolve their core offerings to differentiate themselves as much as possible to appeal to a loyal customer base.

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