Revolut raises $500M at a $5.5B valuation | Hacker News Reader

Revolut raises $500M at a $5.5B valuation

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152 pointsvwvw174 comments

Quite impressed with the valuation.

Transferwise Borderless seems to have a better business model with sane prices and not "everything free".

And Revolut still uses their e-money license instead of their proper Lithuanian banking license. Quite surprising.

Yep, Transferwise Borderless is quite great. They also offer things that Revolut doesn't such as U.S. bank account, plus Revolut just feels bloated and complex with hidden fees.

Not sure what hidden fees are you referring to? As far as I can tell, all the fees are explained on their website and in the app.

On the website it just says things like "No fee ATM withdrawals up to €200 per month", but what about after 200€??

I found a help section that is vague too saying "We can provide an estimate of the potential fees...", so not very transparent. Transferwise you can see/calculate on the frontpage what the fee will be.

> On the website it just says things like "No fee ATM withdrawals up to €200 per month", but what about after 200€??

TransferWise debit card's landing page [1] doesn't have the ATM fee either. Their pricing page [2] does.

I was able to find Revolut's pricing page [3], which includes the ATM fee, with a simple search.

[1] https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/card

[2] https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

[3] https://www.revolut.com/legal/fees

2% of all withdrawals?! WTF is this insanity. I thought it might be interesting for a bit, but never mind.

Are they preying on people that live in countries without a working banking system?

I cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but here in the US almost ever ATM that isn't at YOUR bank will charge a $2-$5 fee for withdrawal and then the bank will hit you with another $2-$5 fee. So depending on your bank, if you want $20, it could cost you $10.

OR (story time) if you are like me, and you end up needing cash in rural Oklahoma to pay an upcoming cash-only toll, and you pull off at the ONLY gas station between you and the toll, you could get hit with a $20 fee to pull out $20 (because its a freaking casino).

That said, there are many online-only banks that are part of ATM groups that have 100k free atms at various places all over. I use them.

And when traveling abroad, oddly enough the best cash card I've ever had is a CapitalOne debit card. I only use it when traveling, but no FX fees, and no ATM fees. So in the UK, most of the major banks and grocery chains have free ATMs, so I get free access to my money even abroad.

> I only use it when traveling, but no FX fees, and no ATM fees.

Do they reimburse your ATM fees if you were to use a third-party ATM in the US, or just not charge you an additional fee to withdraw at third-party ATMs?

I actually have never tested that theory out. I probably have $30 on it currently (haven't gone out of country in a few months, so haven't needed to fill it), I'll try to pull money out at the next ATM I come across and reply here.

I just searched up the webpage [1], but there's nothing on it suggesting that Capital One would reimburse your fee.

I'm not based in the US, but I've heard that Schwab and SoFi are the popular ones that would do that.

[1] https://www.capitalone.com/bank/debit-card/

Chase Sapphire reimburses me third-party ATM fees.

An interesting thing when I was in the US with a non US visa card was most of the ATMs didn't charge any fee. Something to do with international legal agreements. It might be worth you trying to use a non US card, perhaps transferwise or revolut.

I’m not being sarcastic. The two countries I have experience with are the Netherlands and Japan, and the cost is 0 and the equivalent of $1.5, regardless of the amount withdrawn, respectively.

In the Netherlands I think I pay a $3 monthly fee for the privilege of having an account, but Japan is free.

In Australia and New Zealand other-bank ATM withdrawal fees are $2. International withdrawals depend on where you are but 3% or $5 (whichever is larger) is common. This is additional to whatever forex rate they give you.

It's only recently that newer banks are removing these fees.

However, accounts are generally free.

At least in the UK most people use contactless. I only use revolut with ATMs when I am travelling. And in this case 2% after 200 euros seems a normal cost of travelling, certainly less than my bank card.

Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less? I mean, in Romania there are technically banks that give you zero-cost withdrawals abroad... but only because they figured they could shift that cost into the exchange rate and most people wouldn't notice (although it's far worse, now they charge you for online & offline payments too, not just ATM withdrawals!)

Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD). Oh, and ATM withdrawals over 200GBP? 2% - just like Revolut: https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

Revolut is not suitable as primary bank, IMO (it's not even clear whether they fully function as a bank vs just "financial institution"). But as a card provider for vacation/travel abroad, it's pretty awesome. Many banks will have fees like "1.5EUR + 1%" which sounds less until you realize that most of the time you withdraw less than 100EUR, nevermind the fact that many ATMs won't even give you more than 200E in one transaction.

[edit] For completeness sake... Citibank offered that here. CitiGold is awesome, unfortunately they don't have a presence here anymore - you can still get the offer with offshore banking, but you have to keep large sums of money with them and they charge you through your nose for investing with Citi (something in excess of 1% yearly if I remember correctly - as a percentage of "assets under management")

> Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD)

That's if you're using a US debit card. They seem to charge a fixed fee of $5.34 to top up any amount of USD via wire transfer.

> That's if you're using a US debit card

A USD debit card. Revolut also claims to charge US cards too (an undisclosed amount) but amazingly enough they charge me nothing for topup from my USD card (issued by Romanian bank)

The transferwise wire transfer fee is on top of SWIFT fees and whatever other fees your bank will charge you for USD. That's pure profit for them, there's no cost that justifies the fee.

> Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less?

Abroad? Mostly a slight markup on the default exchange rate, which is hard to pin down, but certainly less than 2%.

But my problem is mostly this applies on any withdrawal. Not only abroad.

Most European banks add 2% for currency conversion (in addition to non-market rates). Most Canadian banks add 2.5%. https://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/best-foreign-currency-exchan...

Like I said, Revolut is not suitable as your only bank. But it can be awfully convenient as a second card.

WRT "certainly less than 2%" - you might be surprised, do double-check. Not all banks do, but many do here. It's most obvious here at Raiffeisen, where you can have EUR or USD cards (_with_ ATM fees) - or RON cards with no ATM fees (but if you think about checking the currency conversion rate, you're in for a nasty surprise). And again, bad currency conversion is far worse than 2% ATM fee, because it applies on all your purchases, whereas nowadays in many countries you don't actually need to withdraw money... not in excess of 200E/month, anyway.

If you’re in the US, First Republic rebates you all the atm fees and supports high ATM withdrawal limits ($K) per transaction/per day if you have high balances (both of these features worldwide BTW). Some countries (cough USA) don’t have machines with limits that high but places like Germany, Dubai, Japan do

I don't really care about the ATM fees, that was just an example. On Transferwise landing page it does list the fees if you scroll down a bit.

Thank for /legal/fees link didn't think to look there. Imo that should be linked to the pricing page.

I also like the fact that if I have lets say $100 in various currencies (10 different currencies) and try to pay for something valued $95 in some other currency, Revolut will not make the purchase but Transferwise will autoconvert between the currencies and make the purchase. Revolut only autoconverts if one currency has $95 equivalent.

Transferwise has real human phone support, which so far was great for my business account. +1 for prices - I am paying Transferwise fees with pleasure, knowing all those money are returning back to me via great services.

I haven't used Borderless, but Transferwise in general has been fantastic. I looked at Revolut, but have been too happy with Transferwise to even truly consider it

There's less reporting requirements for e-money IIRC.

I actually moved from TransferWise to Revolut, because Revolut has somewhat better FX rates (TransferWise rates are also good).

I've been using Revolut to transfer money between countries because of its near-perfect exchange rate on weekdays, but I fear the day my account would suddenly be locked for weeks because I hit some secret anti-money laundering limit, or because I'm suddenly seen as a customer who is just making them lose money.

I had that happen recently. Fortunately I was not in a rush. I had to complain on social media after the situation hadn't been resolved in a couple of weeks, then magically I got some proper support.

TransferWise has a robust "no bovine manure" approach. I've used different kinds of services from them over four years, and they have been consistently excellent. I make sure to tell so whenever I talk to them, and politely make a note to not lose sight of the valuable things that customers are happy about (transparency, competent human support).

And I like it that they charge a decent price. I have a general allergy to "gratis services", especially in finance-related things.

I wouldn’t say it’s “everything free”. If you purchase outside of FOREX hours you pay 2% on top of every tx. People tend to spend more when they have free time, i.e. on weekends, where the 2% fee applies.

My guess is that Revolut is doing just great in terms of revenue.

Revolut is predatory and walking on the line of legality. I would stay as far away as I can from them.

  - Unfair/illegal employment practices. [1]
  - Dubios crypto service (you can buy and sell but there is no way to transfer in or out) [2]
  - Keeping a firewall between customers and company by only allowing communication via app chatbot [3]
  - Accusations of money laundry. [4]
  - Many people have had their accounts frozen or even money stolen. [5]

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

[2] First hand experience

[3] First hand experience trying to deal with customer support

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47751945

[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/Revolut/, https://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Betrueger-stehlen-Re...

Sources?

The lack of in-person or even phone support is practiced by quite a few banking start ups. This also means that if they block your account for any reason (e.g. suspected fraud), it can be very hard to get hold of them. N26 has had similar issues with people not being able to access their money for weeks after their account got blocked.

Not sure where the rest of the accusations comes from.

Yep, N26 has utterly crappy user service that don't even know how to browse a governmental webpage when you send them the link. I was able to withdraw my money before they lock my account, be now I stay far from them.

Anyway, this is bad because the service provided by these two banks (mainly low international or inter-device fees) are really a must for anyone living in a foreign country, or moving frequently internationally.

Revolut has quite a big customer base in Lithuania and recently many articles have been published about people having their accounts frozen without notice.

Article in Lithuanian: https://www.delfi.lt/verslas/mano-eurai/revolut-klientai-pra...

Freezing without notice is exactly the point of money laundering laws.

https://monzo.com/blog/2019/10/18/watchdog-response

Can you provide links or any other kind of source for these statements?

Customers would be mostly concerned about the fifth one, probably: Many people have had their accounts frozen or even money stolen.

Revolut started blocking accounts with transactions going over some limit, demanding proof for the source of that money, to prevent money laundering. Happened to me, their response was slow, had my account unfrozen in a week or two.

I've never heard claims of money being stolen though, might be hyperbole.

While those things could be true, as a N26 and Revolut free customer, I have to say that yes, they use customer service chat bots, but when you ask for humans, their assistance to me was always good, quick, and solved my issues.

I was on Premium when my account was frozen ;-)

And I did ask for humans, on 3 separate days, as I said, took about 10 days to get a reply.

You're not talking to support when your account gets locked, you're talking to compliance. And it takes time due to same reason Monzo has talked about:

https://monzo.com/blog/2019/10/18/watchdog-response

Did they give any explanation as to why they think that's legal, freezing accounts and blocking payments on a whim, without some court's decision?

AML/KYC laws require you to freeze accounts if you suspect anything.

Traditional banks blocked my transfers a few times and required proof of source.

Did you do anything "weird" or was it just during your average months that they suddenly went ballistic?

I know they're supposed to alert the authorities on suspicious activity, but I believe(d) freezing an account unilaterally is the ultima ratio for extreme cases and wouldn't be done easily, as it will leave the bank open for damages claims, and really makes banks somewhat useless if it happens frequently.

When Revolut first launched in Singapore, it was almost common knowledge that depositing more than $5,000 SGD (approximately $3,500 USD) would more or less cause one's account to be limited for weeks (until one tweets at them to hurry up), because they've triggered the Source of Funds check.

I had the "please tell us where your money comes from" message and my app continued working just fine (I use Revolut for all my personal transactions). Once I sent them a copy of my bank statement and some invoices between my company and me, they restored full access to my account super quickly.

r/revolut is full of experience.

Wow! There are some crazy stories there.

Revolut also block the accounts of members of a certain political party ("PSD") in Romania, "blocking" (stealing) their money, but only if customers admit to being a socialist party member. Here's a screenshot with the questions https://universul.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/revolut-psd...

Transcripted from the Revolut app:

Have you ever held any of the following positions? Select all that apply

- Member - Specialized Commission for Local Government, Legal, Defence, Public Order, Rights and Freedoms of Citizens

- Councilor - Teleorman County Council (as of July 2012)

- Member - Partidului Social Democrat (PSD)

- None of these apply

PSD is a populist party of crooks, mobsters and money launderers. With knowledge of what goes on with PSD in Romania, I would probably deny doing business with them too.

Lol that's not a socialist party, it's a criminal organization. The specific reference to Teleorman is probably because of the ongoing EU investigation concerning fraud with european funds.

Considering they're extremely overzealous with money laundering related freezes, it makes sense for them to avoid doing bussiness with the mob in the first place.

For context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_(Roman...

That's due to PEP regulations.

So members of the other 20-30 parties are not PEP? What about councillors of other counties, would they not be PEP?

Specific organisations were targeted.

Maybe data of this guy was matched with data provided by some external screening provider with the data of a politician? What's the point of asking them if they were a member of some other party if they only expect him to be a member of that specific one.

- there is no way to transfer in or out

Why you say so? I had some eth and converted it back to eur to take it out. If you are referring to having an eth/btc wallet, yeah, it is not that.

So far my experience with the Metal Plan is really pleasant and I recommend it to anyone.

Parent comment meant transfer crypto in or out.

What’s dubious about their crypto service? They’re offering a way to give yourself simple exposure to crypto without a wallet. As the primary use of crypto right now is speculation, seems ideal.

That you're not actually buying cryptocurrencies with it. It's just an IOU from Revolut, with very dubious protection. With the unregulated part of crypto I would bet you'd have absolutely zero protection if Revolut went out of business or just closed your account for some unknown reason.

That’s true of any deposit with Revolut as they’re not a bank — as I understand it anyway. It’s as true of Euros or USD as it is for Bitcoin. They’re done as a business the first time they lose customer money though, and that feels like a reasonable hedge.

> They’re done as a business the first time they lose customer money though, and that feels like a reasonable hedge.

I don't know if they're required to undergo any financial audits, but I hope they don't grow "too big to fail" when they inevitably get compromised in some way.

I am not an employment law expert, but there is nothing remotely illegal about those other things.

In fact, the way they do crypto is very clever - it reduces money laundering risk massively.

> In fact, the way they do crypto is very clever

I don't know if it makes a difference practically, but it's probably different if they actually held the crypto balance in a cold wallet, versus the balance just being a number on a ledger that's pegged to an exchange rate.

They are very convenient though. And they have the best FX rates for those who care.

I only keep a minimum amount on Revolut (<$200), and only top up as needed. This way I don't particularly care if my money gets lost.

Monzo/Starling/TransferWise all have as good an FX rate last time I checked.

It's worth pointing out that Monzo and Starling are bona fide banks with UK banking licenses, with the legal protections and deposit guarantees which that entails.

Revolut and TransferWise, like PayPal, are not.

Yes, but Revolut edges them out (2 pip vs 20+ pip spread). When you convert $30k like I did, I got an extra $100 or so, which payed for one year of Revolut Premium - so I basically got Premium for free.

>> Revolut is predatory and walking on the line of legality.

Like most of the banks, right? [0]

I find their chat communication quite great. After all you can't send documents over a phone call.

>> Many people have had their accounts frozen or even money stolen.

Is there a bank that doesn't do that? If you want to own your money use cash or digital/crypto

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa/hsbc-draws-line-...

>>Like most of the banks, right?

Yes and no. "Predatory" can mean different things.

Most banks are super-cautious, day-to-day. They can be predatory in certain way, taking advantage of customers with things like outrageous overdraft fees, exchange rates and such. They can be feckless, accumulating long-tail, systemic risk with Heads-I-Win-Tails-You-Lose games.^

The old banks are bad in lots of ways, but actually very safe in terms of big individual risk.

Revolut is feckless and/or predatory in a more startup-ey way. They'll "bet the house" on growth. They're also prone to the start-upy customer service "minimalism" math. Customer service is hard, expensive, and generally follows the pareto principle (80/20). IE, most customers don't need much support. Say 8% do. Those 8% are not profitable, and Revolut is willing to (even prefers to) lose them as customers. So, if something goes wrong... you could be in shit.

They also just plain takes risks, like. Last years, their CFO walked out suddenly in response to risk.

All this is not unlike Google and many other companies. I have had downright awful experiences with paypal. For a bank though, this is scary.

I use Revolut. The service is convenient for me, but I won't keep much money in it or be dependant on them for anything critical.

^ HIWTYL - Pronounced Hightail

>> They're also prone to the start-upy customer service "minimalism" math.

I have found their customer service to be very good. They respond within 2-3 minutes so I don't know what you could ask more. It's nothing like Paypal.

When you have a real problem with some aspect of Revolut their chat agents are not empowered to actually fix anything, they just follow a script. If the UI won't allow it, they can't help, and they won't escalate. The only path is to get your solicitor to send them a letter.

With a real bank, you can walk into a branch and speak with the person at the counter. The IRL dynamics alone make it much more likely that your issue will be addressed. That said, I use "traditional" banks and fortunately have not had issues that couldn't be resolved on the phone.

Personally, I haven't had trouble, but I also haven't had problems to fix.

But, I know a lot of people that use Revolut. They're big here (ireland), because we often use multiple currencies.

Anyway, I've heard several first hand accounts of very bad C's on bigger issues, account lock-outs and such. It seems there is not an effective escalation.

There have also been media reports.

This is fine for a 2nd debit card account. I wouldn't use them for my current account.

My experience is that if you need to get past the chatbot to talk to a real person, it takes an undisclosed amount of time (minutes, but could be easily towards 30minutes), and then if you're not immediately attentive when chat representative responds, you go back as being "out of contact", and need to restart. And it's not like the app gives you a notification or anything if the chat representative comes online.

I've never had to do something tricky like e.g. challenge a transaction with them, and I dread that perspective. What I read from people who had that problem is not encouraging.

No? There's a legal definition of predatory for most regulators that is a pretty clear line. The fact that they are regulated means that you have some ability to pursue your case / complaint outside of arbitration with the company.

Part of me wonders if part of this cash stash is for them to create a regulated institution of their own to start doing some more things in regulated markets - $850M is a lot of money!

Please don't list things like this without making at least a 10-second effort to provide sources, it makes it very difficult to engage.

> Unfair/illegal employment practices.

Source? Elaboration? Best I could find is [0] which certainly looks bad but I can't find any references to court cases or employment authorities cracking down (and the UK has pretty decent worker protection).

> Dubios crypto service (you can buy and sell but there is no way to transfer in or out)

What you call "Dubios", I call an easy way for people to play around with crypto without figuring out all the wallets and whatnot. It also avoids a lot of the AML issues around crypto.

> Keeping a firewall between customers and company by only allowing communication via app chatbot

You write the word "human" in the chat and you pretty much instantly get put through to a human. There's no firewall here.

> Accusations of money laundry.

I think you're referring to the events leading up to [1]. Revolut wasn't accused of money laundering, it was reported that one of its systems had been disabled and this may have led to some activity going unnoticed. The CEO later claimed that the system was disabled but an older system was put in its place [2]. The newer system wasn't performing as expected so they reverted it.

This is very different to say HSBC, which was found to be actively participating in money laundering.

Also, "accusations" are just that, accusations. Most societies operate under a presumption of innocence rather than presumption of guilt.

[0]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/revolut-cfo-peter-ohiggins...

[2]: https://blog.revolut.com/let-me-sec-the-record-straight/

> Unfair/illegal employment practices.

Requiring people to bring you new clients before you get employed and not compensating them is illegal in many places. Maybe not the UK.

> Dubios crypto service

They don't disclose that you can not transfer in or out.

> Keeping a firewall between customers and company by only allowing communication via app chatbot

I had to deal with this. If your app doesn't work you are screwed. There is no email, no phone.

> Accusations of money laundry.

Fair enough.

> They don't disclose that you can not transfer in or out.

What does this even mean in the real world though? You can instantly transfer your crypto back to fiat and have it in your bank account virtually instantly, which is better than any crypto exchange I’ve ever heard of. I’ll take this over Last Days of Mtgox any day...

> and the UK has pretty decent worker protection

Really? What about zero-hour contracts? I don't know of any other rich country, which allows such scam contracts. I wouldn't call that decent worker protection.

Isn’t a zero hour contract just casual work where you’re Not guaranteed hours? Sounds like every bar job I’ve ever had.

I think a comparison with hustling for Fiverr -, or Task Rabbit "jobs" is more apt.

It's these kind of companies that get investor money these days. See Uber, see WeWork etc.

Sadly.

Revolut closed my business account with them and would not give me any reason why (all documentation was OK, all my clients are lilly-white busineses).

It is not clear to me if they would not tell me because they're not allowed to by law - or "just because".

Anyway - then the remaining balance on my account - they simply sent that back to the last payment that had been made => They sent my remaining balance to one of my clients!

Great API, great interface, great app, great prices - but I do not trust them any more, obviously.

Randomly closing accounts with no explanation or recourse unfortunately seems to happen with basically every bank or payment provider these days

Transferring your entire balance to an arbitrary account though....yikes

> Randomly closing accounts with no explanation or recourse unfortunately seems to happen with basically every bank or payment provider these days

I suspect aggressive anti money laundering measures getting a few false positives to be the context.

Very likely true.

Fact: the regulations forbid telling the customer that they are being investigated for AML violations. Because absence of signal is itself a signal, the banks are highly incentivised to keep all kinds of communications and explanations to a minimum.

That’s incredible, did you manage to recover the balance?

Yes, I did - from the client, which I fortunately had (and still have) a good relationship with.

Revolut support could not see what the problems was and refused to help.

Glad to hear it. That's such an amazingly weird behaviour though, just fire off the balance to the account of the last payment in. I just can't imagine being a developer writing that code or being a customer service agent and executing that payment

To be fair, big banks like HSBC and Barclays also do this. Plenty of horror stories around. There needs to be a law so they could at least notify people a month or two beforehand and provide a reason...

I believe there is a law allowing them not to provide any reason.

Rather, there is no law that forces them to give a reason.

It's like any business relationship: One party may decide to terminate the relation as long as they respect the contract. They don't have to provide a reason (why would they?)

That said, usually contracts state a minimum notice period.

*requiring

On the odd occasion I've had an issue with Barclays I have been able to walk into a branch and speak to a nice person who has fixed the problem on the spot.

Old style banks have their problems but this isn't one of them. I've had a revolut account that vanished overnight (thankfully there was only 1 euro in it at the time). I also have Monzo but will only use it for small everyday transactions.

Which is funny because hbsc is the go-to bank for cartels

That seems very strange. Because they are licensed by the UK FCA under the "emoney regulations" I think you should be able to take the case to the financial services ombudsman if you are a UK client, have made a complaint and they haven't resolved it to your satisfaction. Most other European countries would have a similar setup.

Don't they have a Latvian? banking license these days?

Lithuanian, yes, AFAIK.

https://www.icpa.org.uk/portal/money_laundering/tipping_off

In my experience at UK banks (trying to avoid embarrassing anyone by name here) what you're obligated to submit a SAR for is pretty broad and once you've SAR'd someone you almost always close their account with no reason given. So this experience will be reasonably common at every bank that does business in the UK

As others have mentioned these are money laundering laws. But some of them are a bit open to interpretation and from what I've seen personally Revoluts interpretation is pretty broad depending on whether they like you or not.

The problem with Revolut that cannot be compared to other banks is that you will NEVER be able to speak to anyone that isn't a mindless support chat drone. This is really where the big difference is. The APP may be miles ahead of wells fargos or capital one and even N26 which in theory also has mainly chat based support etc. but if something goes wrong there there are channels to go. Here's it's just a huge black hole.

The only way I would ever recommend Revolut to anyone is to attach it to your own credit card and fill it on demand when you travel. I only ever fill the amount I want right now because the last time I transferred money to my account the account got flagged and I had an absolutely horrible experience with a bunch of conflicting statements from mindless drones that kept trying to trick me into giving them way more information than any bank in any country I've ever used ever has.

> The problem with Revolut that cannot be compared to other banks is that you will NEVER be able to speak to anyone that isn't a mindless support chat drone.

I know quite a few people who were the target of Revolut's Source of Funds check (I believe the deposit limit when it first launched here in Singapore was an absurd $5,000 SGD, or approximately $3,500 USD) — what has happened is that the chat system would be unresponsive for weeks, because all "chats"/tickets would be routed to Revolut's understaffed compliance department without even notifying the user.

> The only way I would ever recommend Revolut to anyone is to attach it to your own credit card and fill it on demand when you travel.

I would recommend this too, except I don't dare to use it as my primary travel card as I might suddenly hit some undisclosed limit and get my account frozen while I'm travelling.

When I opened my Revolut account I took advantage of their referral scheme. I would get €15 for every customer I referred to them and who used their debit card. The new customers would also get €15. I got five people to sign up, the max.

We never saw the money. When I raised the issue over chat they told me that all my referrals took too long to setup their account and make the first payments. They wouldn't tell me what the time limits was though. Every referral made their first payment within 30 days, so that doesn't seem too long for such an offer if you ask me.

At this point I was using it as my primary account so it wasn't like I was just signing up to get referral bonuses.

This experience made me think they weren't as trustworthy as they claimed to be.

The fact that they'd nickel and dime you over a measly 75 EUR is worrying. Customer acquisition for this kind of product should cost far, far more.

You're thinking too small: if they nickel and dime a million people that becomes 75mm EUR. How many people are going to cause a big enough stink over 75 EUR though individually? Not really anyone, so they could get away with it - maybe if enough people posted similar stories then it would gain interest from enforcement agencies.

That's still a million customers who went through the friction of setting up a new bank account, and whose first impressions are now net negative.

They sometimes refer to their referral bonus system as a game or challenge, that says it all really.

I have kept a paid Revolut account for the last nearly two years, and it has performed flawlessly. The one time when I needed support, reply was prompt, polite, professional, and to the point. This is service I use for day-to-day business. I never keep large sums there, so if the whole thing goes belly up one day, it will cause a shrug and not much more. Topping up from my 'real' bank - or wherever - is easy enough to do on the fly: I sometimes do so while queueing in the supermarket. Features I like, and which are apparently beyond the ability of my regular bank to offer: Virtual and diposible cards. I use these for all web transanctions. No need to spread the details of my physical card around, and I can temporarily lock any card number, should I feel the need. Also, the physical card is discreet of appearance; just a grey piece of plastic, not screaming my banking preference for the world to see. And a handy ability to instantly create a payment link where anyone can pay me via credit card. I happily pay my monthly fee. Service well worth it.

"Features I like, and which are apparently beyond the ability of my regular bank to offer: Virtual and diposible cards."

I am interested in using virtual/disposable cards ...

Is it, in fact, correct that no "proper" US bank offers these ? What about paypal ?

What is the most stable, boring, financial services provider that offers virtual cards ?

Does anyone allow me to create a virtual card via API, the same way I can "create" a new phone number with Twilio ?

> I am interested in using virtual/disposable cards ...

> Is it, in fact, correct that no "proper" US bank offers these ? What about paypal ?*

> What is the most stable, boring, financial services provider that offers virtual cards ?

Most US-issued bank debit cards work with Privacy.com, I think.

You may soon discover (depending on your jurisdiction) that topping up is no longer an option, because your actual bank starts treating these transactions as cash advances, 3%-4% fee (and trashing your credit rating too).

Revolut has been completely useless about this, and their chat teams are just there to waste your time.

Multiple currencies and cheap exchange are great when you travel a lot, and virtual credit cards and a nice spending UI are nice to haves. But nothing makes up for being jerked around for hours because their system is broken and they won't fix it.

Also, from an investment pov I think Apple Pay is going to crush them.

>>You may soon discover (depending on your jurisdiction) that topping up is no longer an option, because your actual bank starts treating these transactions as cash advances, 3%-4% fee (and trashing your credit rating too)

I may not. In fact, I have no idea what you mean by 'cash advance'. By HN standards I am pennyless, but wouldn't ever dream of spending or withdrawing money that I haven't got.

Calm down, I'm not saying you are poor. Banks have started treating top ups as cash advances, even when your account has a positive balance. This has logical sense because you can immediately withdraw that money as cash.

For some reason Revolut is unable or unwilling to support normal cash transfer mechanisms.

Okay, this is news to me. But then, my bank is not a US one. There is no money in my account that I cannot immediately withdraw as cash. That is sort of the whole point of my bank account, except of course it's mandatory if I wish to receive wages for the job I perform...

Anyway, call me poor all you like. I actually am.

> You may soon discover (depending on your jurisdiction) that topping up is no longer an option, because your actual bank starts treating these transactions as cash advances, 3%-4% fee (and trashing your credit rating too).

This should not be an issue as long as the topup is done with a debit card.

> Also, from an investment pov I think Apple Pay is going to crush them.

Apple Pay doesn't have any "special" features that help with travel and paying in foreign currencies. Interestingly enough, Revolut supports Apple Pay in a couple of countries.

There valuation is currently almost 1/3 of the Deutsche Bank market capitalization. Just for your reference.. VC & tech are in a big bubble

Deutsche Bank Total assets €1.34 trillion Market Cap 19.91B

JPM Total assets US$2.687 trillion Market Cap 414.52B

There is a reason Deutsche Bank has such a low valuation

I'm also very sceptical of that 10 million customers line. Do you think its just people that have opened an account with them at any point? I bet the DAU (a reasonable metric for someones main bank, especially in today's cashless society) is a very small percentage of that.

I'm less skeptical that they have a high number of active users, but probably not a high number of users that use this "bank" like a real bank.

I use another "neobank" called Simple in the US. It is not a primary account. It is how I divvy up allowance to my wife and I for our weekly fun money ($70/person/week). Can be spent on anything we want, but once it's gone its gone. I use mine for lunches, she packs a lunch and uses hers for shopping. We both save a certain percentage of that to pay for vacations.

Our typical average monthly balance is in the low 3 figures. Like currently I have $110 in savings and $45 in checking. I have no clue about how much my wife has, and that is the beauty of it.

I'm with Monzo in the UK and use it similarly, Twice a month or so, £100 goes in there to pay for things like dining out and the occasional grocery shop. It's a nice way of separating the dailies from the monthlies. It means my Old Fashioned Bank's statement is readable.

I'm one of those "customers". I tried using connecting to my old account to check out the app after 4 years but I was asked for ID verification, which for some reason failed, in order to be able to do anything. I can't close my account since there's a 20 eurocent balance on it, so it probably still counts as a "customer" account even though I can't use it in any way.

> a reasonable metric for someones main bank, especially in today's cashless society

In Europe, the primary region for Revolut at the moment, cashlessness is highly variable. In a country like the UK or The Netherlands, DAU might be a reasonable measure but in say Germany, which is largely still cash-based, it's less relevant.

I'd say MAU or something like that makes more sense for a predominantly European financial service (Revolut is not a bank, it does not offer bank accounts).

I just use it when abroad (my high street bank FX is terrible) so I might be one of those casual customers. The crypto and "premium" features don't interest me in the slightest.

I might be just outside the millennial target market though.

There is no web application, no API, no Linux client and the android client works only with google app crap.

And, on top of that, the customer support is nonexistent.

Do you have an alternative to suggest with better support?

I've used revolut for the last to years and it seems to me that most people here are misunderstanding the way the app is used. It is a prepaid credit card - cash without cash, which lets you send cash to your friends, top up from your actual bank account, change currency when you are visiting another country. I wouldn't use it for big currency exchanges.

You have to watch the news to know what Revolut is up to and when to revisit the privacy settings to turn off a new toggle - social media platform this month, credit agencies the next

Revolut was funded with the money stolen from Russia. Father of the founder was one of the top Gazprom managers.

I find it absolutely astonishing people would pour half a billion into a fintech company which puts real money transactions on the same platform as a betting game and even worse, a betting game which claims it's some sort of digital money. (bitcoin) I never used Revolut because of this and never will. To be fair, I never used Revolut because I thought bitcoin is a scam but since last November I know better.

http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2019/11/bitcoin-11-years-in.htm... and also https://www.aier.org/article/bitcoin-as-a-novel-financial-ga...

I refused to interview with them due to their poor employment practises. A quick search reveals what's going on.

I found a TechCrunch article[1], is that what you're referring to? Hadn't heard of these issues before (but also never tried to apply there).

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

This line from the article is interesting:

"An analysis of the start and end dates of 147 former Revolut employees on LinkedIn suggests that over 80 percent had lasted less than a year, and over half stayed at the company for less than six months."

--------------

She did a 30-minute job interview over Google Hangouts with the London-based head of business development, Andrius Biceika, and was immediately told she had passed to the next round, which would involve a small test. “The surprise came when I received the task and it asked me to get the company as many clients as possible, with each one depositing €10 into the app,” says Laura.

The instructions on the exercise said the applicants should recruit at least 200 clients in a week to have a chance at passing to the next interview phase.

--------------

Wow.....

To play devils advocate, it was a business development position... so it’s a bit like asking a developer to do a homework exercise no?

It's like asking a developer to build out a feature that will be put into production. For free.

No, this is working for free.

In a developer test you are given a generic problem.

Yes, but only if the developer's homework exercise was to take a feature and implement it to actually be released in the live app.

There's nothing wrong with results based hiring. But when someone asks you to do a test like this, don't do it for free! Don't make it easy for these hustlers by agreeing to work at minimum wage hoping for a bonus once you have required thousands of users for them. They will just find another sucker and repeat.

Huh, could you summarize the results of a quick search here, to save everyone else the time?

This slack message from the CEO went viral at some point and i think sums up the culture nicely:

https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/aanw4w1b8eW/crop/1440/f...

tl;dr: "I noticed that several product owners / team leaders are significantly below targets and still do not work on weekends to catch up"

Everyone keeps repeating and referencing the same old story about where a few of the unhappy employees were bashing the company about its startup culture. Some people are better suited to work at more established companies, not startups growing massively where one has to wear multiple hats and probably work more than the regular 9-5.

I think most people are better suited to be treated like humans and not be exploited. Calling it "startup culture" does not make it any better.

You have signed up on HN just to defend your employer, right? Please tell us about yourself.

Funny enough their Head of HR reached out to me last month for a call. After rescheduling multiple times because she failed to join the call - I think I'm going to give up with them.

This is one of my fundamental red flags. I'm expected to never reschedule an interview, it consumes both the interviewer and interviewee time, it's stressful and something you generally try to prepare for. If the HR/TA from the company that is trying to hire me fails to join the call it's an instant pass.

I don't know what is your current work or life situation but there are many other places looking for people with similar skills that probably won't disrespect your time.

I just don't understand why you would even reach out in the first place if you have no intentions of actually making the call. As you say, it's a waste of time.

And yes it was more being curious.

Rescheduling upfront is fine, but just not showing up and rescheduling later is a huge red flag for me.

So did I. They gave me a home task, but after some googling and watching an interview with the founder I got an impression that the whole thing is a Ponzi scheme (in addition to the toxic environment and other negative things you can find about them), so I told them I changed my mind and would not proceed.

what's interesting about this is : judging from the comments they have a horrible customer service, yet they seem to be in hyper growth mode

I heard a lot about N26 and Revolut here in Europe. Is there any US company doing the same?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobank lists two US companies. Interestingly enough, it doesn't list Revolut, even though I think it qualifies.

Fintech this week is on fire. First we have intuit and now this... wow.

Revolut is where WeWork was a few years ago. Eventually a few guys will make some nice money and the whole thing will go down the drain. VC money is nice, however at some point you need to start making your own money and how they are planning to do so is a question nobody has an answer to.

You could say the same about Transferwise. Revolut is setting themselves up as a bank for millenials/gen Z. It is light years ahead of traditional banks in terms of user experience. Banks are a proven way of making money.

> It is light years ahead of traditional banks in terms of user experience.

Their app experience is mostly stellar, but I wouldn't say the same of their support, and the fear that one's account would be locked because they hit some undisclosed limit.

I haven't had to deal with TransferWise's support yet, but I've heard that it's one of the "better" ones.

Any bank account can be locked at any time because an algorithm disagrees with you, traditional or online. That's just the reality of banking, especially in the post-HSBC scandal era. I wouldn't keep my savings in Revolut for sure, but it's not really designed for that.

If you pay for the premium/metal plan, the support is stellar as well (or at least, it has been for me)

Transferwise though is not playing the free game. They charge you fees and they have been profitable for three years now. https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/annualreport2019

"It is light years ahead of traditional banks in terms of user experience."

Show me a proper US bank that doesn't care that it's "Presidents Day" or "Labor Day" or "Sunday" (since nobody else does) and let's me conduct proper business 365 days per year - then we can talk about user experience ...

I am annoyed and amused (mostly annoyed) that I am using a global internet to access remote banking that credits bank transfers using a (literal) horse and buggy clearing timetable.

What is funnier still is I have tried to transfer from one Wells Fargo account to another Wells Fargo account, and it still took 3 days to deposit (of course, they took it from me immediately).

It feels like they are going the traditional bank route, give away a basic product and charge fees for everything over a threshold.

Looking at their business pricing page, it looks like they are going to get into commercial lending, which could prove profitable. I don't know if it is VC-scale, though.

Most big, successful banks that have withstood the test of time have grown VERY slowly over nearly 200 years and acquired a lot of local banks along the way.

I don't recall all of the numbers but my brother (a small-town-bank vp) told me not that long ago that most small town banks will profit between $1M and $5M per year (5-10% return on equity). A small bank will usually have a few thousand customers.

So if Revolut has 10M customers (2000x bigger than a small town bank), and the customers are using Revolut like they would their small town banks, they should be profitable at some point.

It's one thing to get high growth among millennials with a shiny app and completely another to get into commercial banking.The reason why majority of the banks rather do mortgage and some other 'easier' products is because of how difficult and complex commercial lending is. I don't think it's fair to compare a local town bank in the US to challenger bank in Europe. I suspect a very high percentage of revolut accounts were opened purely to support alternative banking, however these customers aren't and won't be the ones that will bring fortunes to the bank's coffers.

I agree, which is why I'm saying that I don't think that Revolut can be a VC-scale commercial bank. But I do believe it will be profitable if they can convince their users to use it as an actual bank, and not just a novelty app and debit card.

The difference is the industry, and that counts.

Wework was silly because real estate is not software. The profits needed to eventually justify all that "burn-to-grow" money was never possible regardless of scale.

It's not an AdWords Vs Yahoo ads situation. The market leader isn't taking all the profits.

Banking isn't software either, but banking is banking... It's where the money is, lol.

Seriously, financial services is rich, rich pickings... Insurance, lending, business accounts, transfers....

A bank with low operating costs and millions of employees is worth a lot.

If it was a truly American company, I suspect the market cap would be way higher... UK investors are more cautious, and the company is a little dicey

Please can we stop linking to articles with Cookie-walls.

https://outline.com/9cuRRS

Try https://baitblock.app

It can remove cookie walls on many websites automatically

It looks good. When should we expect firefox support?

With NoScript they never show up in the first place.

Dang and others addressed the paywall complaint recently here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22306181

You're helping the community out by pasting the link. Don't need to spoil it :)

So stop linking to 99% of websites?

On the name, I doubt it would be successful in the US. The “lution” part of revolution makes the word sound better. Without it, it invokes “revolting”. Incidentally, Revolution Money in the US became American Express Serve.

Also the no human support, chat bot only thing is frightening on various levels. It’s great until something actually goes wrong or the system deems you unfavorable.

I've had various issues with Revolut, but there is human support available (eventually) - if you type 'human' in the bot chat you get connected to an agent.

The fact that it's the only support channel available - no phone - is frustrating, and it's even worse that it's in-app only. It gets tiring trying to type up your problem on a phone keyboard, especially when it takes multiple chats to get resolved.

And it seems does not support US customers, only support in EU.

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