Revolut chat

That’s interesting, and the first time I’m hearing of that. Anecdotally I know a friend who had to pay for medical care while in Germany, because he didn’t have an EHIC (I believe he successfully claimed the money back after returning, though, but it still seems prudent to get an EHIC given that it’s free to do so.)

Yes in France and Germany among others you can pay and then complete a form to claim back all or part of the cost, but not needing a EHIC is in countries where healthcare is provided free at point of delivery. You basically are treated like a local. If the country provide free hospital treatment but you pay for a GP prescription the same would apply to you, if prescriptions are free they are free to you too. In some places like France you will pay for your medicine and then claim back but locals have to do similar. Healthcare is one of the areas lacking in harmonization and not covered by some EU treaties.

For some medical conditions it is possible to fill in a form before you go abroad to get the UK’s agreement to cover treatment costs abroad.

Interesting, and good to know. From experience I know that in Germany you don’t (usually) have to pay up front if you have an EHIC.

Wow, so you’re telling me I should tell my relatives in the US (well, the ones I still talk to) that if they ever need medical treatment they can’t afford, there are countries their British passports will get them treatment in?

That just seems far too open to abuse to be true…?

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Open to abuse but true

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Wow. I’m not gonna tell anyone that, actually… but I’m just shocked. Who gets the bill for this when abused?

I guess the countries that agree to accept just presentation of a passport. But many countries are tightening up on foreign citizens using their services hence the pressures in the UK to make foreigners show their ID prior to treatment in the NHS hospitals

Then their loss, my worry was that they were billing that back to the NHS, allowing people not entitled (British, but not resident) a back door to NHS services.

The only time I am aware of billing back to the HMRC National Insurance is for surgery for non-emergency pre-existing conditions which would normally be covered by a form obtained prior to your trip from UK authorities authorising them picking up the costs (if they agree to do so, but it depends where you live in UK as to weather they expect the treatment to be done in your trust area or if they happy to cover costs for overseas treatment).

As for British citizens not resident in the UK. There is more scope for abuse of foreign health services due to the UK not having any proper database of residents (the one associated with our national ID cards having been scrapped when the cards were). As long as you have a National Insurance number some time in your life there is no real issue. No body abroad is going to ask you to show a utility bill to prove your residency - the usual UK solution ha ha, so they will normally accept any address you give them, such as a relatives - although an address on an official document like a driving license is great, if you just have your passport there is no real way of them checking.

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Revolut now says they are the direct issuer of their cards, not wire card ltd, does this mean that they have setup their own processor like monzo?

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I’m not sure they even could do that without reissuing all existing cards. @GalaxyMergirl I think you know a lot more about this area that me. Does that sound about right?

If it is their own BIN range I think they could, but I’m not sure.

Their BIN for new Visa cards is 459654

Just checked on this website but issuer didn’t come up

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Just opened Revolut app and this message popped up. They are definitely moving in house for at least cards I don’t think card processing will be in house though :thought_balloon:

Screenshot_20180122-162652__01

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I, somewhat pointlessly it turns out, have signed up for a free (£5) card. I had a query so had a look through the community but I couldn’t find an answer. It seems to consist of topics started by mainly one bloke!!! Alas, I asked via the chat option and they replied to me so quickly that I thought it was just an automated response. Nope, they answered it as quick as a flash. Skimming through the topics on their community it does seem to be complaint after complaint.

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You’re spot on with the comments about their online community. Furthermore, the number of complaining posts seems to have exploded recently.

Consider yourself fortunate to have received the support they gave; it has been swamped due to a huge upsurge in userbase (and requests for support) which broadly coincided with their offering of support for cryptocurrencies, having appeared to have attracted a large (and new) demographic to the card.

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I have seen for a few days, that Revolut seems to have problems with incoming bank transfers (yet again). Some users report losing 1000s of pounds, having to pay bounced SWIFT transfer fees, etc [e.g. 1, 2, 3]

Now I just got the below email from Revolut. Note how they are trying to downplay everything, pretend it’s only the others’ fault, essentially washing their hands in innocence, and absolving themselves from any responsibility.

More than ever I have come to the conclusion that they are just not safe to use for any amount of money that you are not comfortable loosing. Transferwise or Monese it is from now on, even though they cost money …

In preparation for launching a feature pertaining to our current accounts, Revolut has been working closely with both banks and SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), making all the necessary tests before we release this feature.

For the purpose of running these tests, we made a temporary update to a SWIFT table. This is essentially a spreadsheet containing Bank Identifier Codes, or BICs, as well as other details which allow the banks to find Revolut accounts whenever our users choose to top up via bank transfer

Updating SWIFT tables is a normal banking operation that generally doesn’t affect the end users or their accounts, since these tables are sent to all the banks in the SWIFT system and the details our updated automatically on a daily basis. It works similar to switching bank accounts, where all your direct debits are automatically linked to the new account details.

So what went wrong?

Soon after the table was updated, we noticed a pattern of unusual activity. Some users weren’t able to make bank transfers into their Revolut accounts as their money would simply bounce back - a sign that something was wrong.

  1. We contacted SWIFT and changed the BIC code back to the original one, which drastically limited the number of users being affected.

  2. We created an action group to identify which banks were having issues processing transfers to Revolut, established a way to contact them, and began the process.

  3. We informed our customer services teams and devised a plan to deal with the ongoing issue.

Because we acted quickly, we were able to contain the issue, limiting its impact to a subset of the users attempting to make SEPA transfers from a bank account to their Revolut account.

Unfortunately, some banks have been slow at updating their tables, which means they still have the wrong details for our accounts. These banks do not update their tables daily, but rather monthly, which is why some users may still have issues topping up via bank transfer until the end of the month.

I’ve been affected. What should I do?

We are currently working with these banks to update the relevant codes and we’re actively monitoring transfers to help resolve the issue for everyone. Until this is fully dealt with, this is what you need to do to ensure you won’t be affected:

  1. Top-up via card to avoid bank transfer top-ups wherever possible.

  2. If you do need to top-up via bank transfer, please ask your bank to make a SEPA Credit Transfer to your Revolut account and ensure you are using the correct bank details. The correct BIC, as shown in the app, is REVOGB21.

  3. If you’ve already made a transfer which hasn’t reached your Revolut account yet, please ask your bank what’s going on. If they cannot make the transfer, you should ask for them to revert it, placing the funds back into your account.

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Once they get their banking licence (Lithuania), does this mean they are going to be regulated, and therefore won’t be able to get away with all these problems of missing funds and blocked accounts all the time?

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They can still have missing funds and blocked accounts, but it will be easier to escalate complaints to industry regulators/ombudsman

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