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EDIT May 2020:  This offer is currently suspended due to coronavirus.  You will NOT receive a free card if you use the link in this article.

Revolut, the app-based current account, started off life as a free debit card for people who do not have, or do not want, a separate ‘0% FX fees’ credit card to use when they are travelling.

The company has moved on substantially since then.  Revolut now positions itself as a digital current account provider, competing with Starling, Monzo, Atom, N26 and Monese.  ‘0% FX’ and fee-free money transfers are still a big part of the Revolut model, but the company has shifted its focus towards everyday banking.

There are now over 6 million Revolut cardholders across Europe and it is now available in beta in Australia. Revolut is also working on a US launch and currently building a waiting list.

Revolut has given us a special deal. If you apply for a standard Revolut card via the links in this article and top up £10, you will receive the card for free.  This saves you the £4.99 delivery fee.  Once you’ve tried it out, you can decide whether to upgrade to one of the new premium options.

The official Revolut website is here – you will see from the text that there is no card delivery fee.

How does Revolut work?

You can sign up for FREE on the Revolut website here. You will need to download the Revolut app and verify the account with your phone number.

As Revolut now operates as a current account, you can transfer money in or out using BACS or IBAN.  It is also possible to have your salary paid onto your Revolut card if you wish.

Alternatively, you can add money using a credit card (Mastercard or Visa).  Most credit card companies treat Revolut top-ups as a purchase, not a cash advance, although you should do a trial to test this.  This means that you earn miles and points on the top-up.  Be aware that Tesco Bank does charge cash advance fees if you load your Revolut card from a Tesco Bank credit card and there may be others too.

What are Revolut’s key features?

As a purely online current account provider, Revolut has started with a clean sheet of paper and introduced some interesting features which many High Street banks do not offer:

You get a current account in £ and €, with an IBAN number for EU payments

You can receive instant spending notifications on your smartphone

The app has various budget controls and analytical tools to help you monitor and analyse your spending

There are advanced security features – you can freeze the card via the app, you can block contactless payments, swipe payments, ATM withdrawals, and/or online payments and optional location-based security can block all transaction from a location which is not near your phone

The “Vaults” feature allows you to round up each purchase to the nearest full £1, moving your spare change to a savings account

You can send and request money from your friends – handy if you want to split rent payments, a bill, etc.

And, of course, you can still spend abroad and send money overseas at the real exchange rate

Revolut now operates with 150 currencies, of which the 24 core ones are fee-free up to a limit of £5,000 per month.   On the standard card, there is a 0.5% fee on FX spend or transfers above this level.  You can also withdrawal up to £200 per month from international ATMs with no fees added (£2 fee thereafter).

Not only are there no FX transaction fees when spending abroad, but as Revolut uses the interbank rate, you should be getting slightly finer pricing than using a 0% FX fees Visa or Mastercard credit card.  Other cards use a centralised Visa and Mastercard exchange rate which is slightly worse than the interbank rate.

There is some small print around the ‘0% FX fees’ options.  There is a 0.5% -1.5% mark up at the weekend depending on the currency, which gives Revolut a buffer against losses whilst the currency markets are closed.  You can get around this by loading your card during the week for free to create a credit balance which you can then spend during the weekend.

Revolut upgrades

Revolut offers two upgrades to the standard card, Premium and Metal.

Revolut metal card review

Revolut Premium

For £6.99 per month you can upgrade your card to a Premium card. This card comes with a free ATM withdrawal allowance of £400/€400 per month as well as unlimited FX volume.

As a Premium customer you also get free overseas medical insurance, free global express delivery, exclusive priority 24/7 customer support and exclusive Premium promotions.  To be honest, however, I struggle to see the value here unless you are hitting the £5,000 monthly cap for FX transactions.

There are four different Premium card designs which you can order for free.  A new feature is free disposable virtual cards which make onine shopping more secure by creating a new card number everytime you make a purchase.

Recently Revolut has added the option for Premium cardholders to purchase airport lounge access through the LoungeKey network via the Revolut app. Entry for one person costs £15 and the money will be taken off your Revolut account when booking via the app.

free revolut card save £5 on postage

Revolut Metal card

Revolut’s newest product is a contactless metal Mastercard. This card comes with all of the Standard and Premium features plus a free ATM withdrawal allowance of £600 per month.  There is also a 24/7 concierge service to help sort out your social life.

With this card you also earn cashback on your day to day spending.  You will get up to 0.1% within Europe and 1% outside Europe.

Revolut Metal card holders get one complimentary LoungeKey airport lounge visit per membership year.

The metal card costs £12.99 per month.  For regular travellers this might actually be better value than the Premium card, since the 1% cashback earned on non-EU purchases could mount up quickly.  

Remember that the 1% cashback on non-EU transactions is on top of the ‘no FX fees’ benefit.  This means, net, you are 4% better off with the metal Revolut card than you would be paying a non-EU bill with a standard credit card with a 3% FX fee and no cashback.

What’s new?

Some of the recently added new features are:

Revolut Donations (round up your spending and donate to charities like Save the Children, WWF or ILGA-Europe)

Group Vaults (connect with your friends and save up for a joint gift, holiday, etc.)

Gold and Rose Gold metal cards (new design of the metal cards)

Cash rewards with Revolut Perks (the more you spend the more perks will be activated and loaded to your account)

Free Business account

Commission free stock trading (Revolut Metal customers can make up to 100 commission free stock trades of up to $1,000 each per month – US stock market only)

Conclusion

You can sign up for the standard Revolut card for FREE on the Revolut website here.  Using our exclusive HfP link will remove the £4.99 delivery fee for your card as long as you top-up with £10.  Once you’ve tried it out, you can decide whether to upgrade to Premium or Metal.

EDIT May 2020:  This offer is currently suspended due to coronavirus.  You will NOT receive a free card if you use the link in this article.

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Category

General

Comments (98)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Newbie A says:
    19 Aug19 August 07:48

    Morning everyone,

    If people don’t mind sharing, I would like to hear more experience with how much people can top up their revolut account using Virgin CC over what period without upsetting either party. Also experience with topping up with Curve (I have a non domestic points earning CC that revolut charges a fee to top up with), does Curve count this as paying credit card backed with credit card? How much can you top up without problems? Thanks very much.

    • Froggee says:
      19 Aug19 August 08:06

      I do 4k approx monthly. Use it for small items of every day spending, FX and quite big bank transfers. Had both for over six months and no issue from either yet.

      • Tilly71 says:
        19 Aug19 August 08:24

        Is that 4k a mix of CC & other bank transfers in per month as most know about the max CC amounts per week that will be authorised and its know where near 4k.

        • Froggee says:
          19 Aug19 August 19:16

          4k in one go.

          • Newbie A says:
            20 Aug20 August 06:59

            Hi Froggee, I think Tilly71and I are interested to know what do you use to load 4k into revolut? Is it from a credit card directly, via Curve or a bank transfer or a combo? Thx

          • Froggee says:
            20 Aug20 August 16:56

            I use the Virgin Premium credit card. It was very sketchy at the beginning with, at one point, even £200 being rejected (my smallest top up was £20!) but I worked it up over a few months and haven’t had any problems for some time.

            I actually just added up all my top ups and I’m just under £30k since I got the card in February although I literally just did another £4k – almost all on the Virgin cc. Given the checks everyone talks about I’m surprised I’ve not had to send off my P60 etc yet although maybe they’ll ask tomorrow now!

            I’ve never paid in from my bank account although have had a couple of modest transfers in from other people. Of my spend, maybe £10k has been overseas, lots of small purchases in the UK and the balance which must be close to £15k has been (legitimate) transfers to people/companies for bills etc.

  • Matt says:
    19 Aug19 August 07:57

    Do any of the other new fintech account providers treat credit card top-ups as a purchase, or is it only revolut?

    • Andrew L says:
      19 Aug19 August 09:39

      I only know of Revolut, but one way of getting around debit card only top-ups is to top-up with a Curve card which is a debit card linked to the credit card you want to use.

  • Dave says:
    19 Aug19 August 08:20

    Just signed up as sounds interesting. Anyone get an IHG MasterCard to work with it? Just tried to add money and it got declined and said to contact card issuer.
    Also how easier is it to do large transactions? I’ve got solicitors fees of around £5k to pay in the next month. Would be great if I earn some points doing it rather than having to use billhop to do that…

    • Andrew L says:
      19 Aug19 August 08:55

      I have my Revolut debit card linked with my Creation IHG Rewards credit card and it auto top-ups from that card when my Revolut balance falls below £200. Be warned though Creation limit how much you can top-up with though. Try any amount up to £250 and it should go through. You may then need to wait a few days before topping up again though. Tip…£100 a day top-up seems to work okay with Creation.

    • Roberto says:
      19 Aug19 August 09:13

      Could you look at the capital on tap card for a £5k spend? You have to pay for the card of course but the 25k avios you get got the solicitors fee spend wipes that out in one go and you get a great 1 avios per pound spent moving forwards.. Bin it at the end of the 12 months.

  • John says:
    19 Aug19 August 09:51

    This offer is nothing special as revolut regularly give cards out for free to new signups.

    • Nick_C says:
      19 Aug19 August 10:51

      AFAIK you only get a free Revolut card by following a sponsored link. By using Rob’s link, you are helping to keep this site viable.

  • crjos says:
    19 Aug19 August 10:09

    Has anyone tried topping up Revolut (or Curve) with the Virgin Atlantic card? Does it incur a cash advance fee? Thanks

    • Newbie A says:
      19 Aug19 August 10:23

      I’ve regularly used my curve card backed by my Virgin CC with no cash advance fee incurred. Have also taken out £200 pm cash at ATM no fee either. I have regularly topped up Revolut with Virgin CC without incurring a fee. But not clear what the max people have managed?

      I would like to know if people have managed to top up revolut using their curve card without a problem?

      • Genghis says:
        19 Aug19 August 10:34

        Why would you top up Revolut with Curve?

        • Rob H says:
          19 Aug19 August 10:48

          I guess tso you could pay a direct debit/bank transfer from a credit card linked to curve?

          So in my case I haven’t managed to link my Tandem card to Revolut, but did manage to link my Curve card – so now I have an indirect link to the Tandem card.

          • Genghis says:
            19 Aug19 August 11:05

            Fair enough, but a waste of Curve limits IMO.

          • Rooster says:
            19 Aug19 August 14:25

            its ok if you don’t have anything else to use Curve for but if you max Curve limits out then you don’t want to waste it this route

          • crjos says:
            23 Aug23 August 11:59

            That’s good to know.

            I haven’t set up either yet, but do have some bills to HMRC coming up. Would you go for Curve or Revolut?

        • Andrew L says:
          19 Aug19 August 11:09

          For credit card points. It”s like a cash withdrawal without using up any of your cash withdrawal limit

          • Andrew L says:
            19 Aug19 August 11:11

            No need to involve Curve for Revolut top-up from credit card.

          • Newbie A says:
            19 Aug19 August 11:15

            I have a non UK (no FX) points earning CC which revolut charges a fee if I top up using it directly. So want to go via Curve.

        • Doug M says:
          19 Aug19 August 11:36

          Yep, Curve’s only value as I see it is where it allows you to do something you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Putting any general spend through Curve seems a complete waste, and the idea you can rely on it as a single card is only for the very foolhardy. This is why I laugh at their business model and the fund raising, I can’t see they have any sort of viable product beyond letting you game other cards, which eventually I’m sure the legacy providers will put a stop to. In the way Amex killed them overnight, the others could easily follow Tesco’s path and then who would use it?

          • Rooster says:
            19 Aug19 August 14:19

            The thing is about these ‘limited potential businesses’ is that while they have the marketing budget either though sponsoring or ‘referral credits’ people are biased and promote them by convincing themselves and others that the product is better than it is. Curve will either be brought out by some company making a speculative bet on the customers they have acquired or they will go broke and someone buys their data for a fraction of what they spent.

            I don’t even think Curve’s data is valuable at all because as you said most people only use the card somewhere where they can’t use a normal card so the data is biased and makes HMRC look like the most popular spend in the UK hehe

          • Mark2 says:
            19 Aug19 August 17:55

            Curve’s data could be very valuable as they have got credit card details including CVV or our credit cards; or am I wrong?

          • Doug M says:
            19 Aug19 August 18:17

            I don’t think that can be sold legitimately

          • Rooster says:
            20 Aug20 August 00:31

            haha I meant it could be valuable for legal reason such as marketing to existing customers etc

  • Rob H says:
    19 Aug19 August 10:46

    Has anyone managed to link a Tandem card to Revolut – mine failed.

    • Rob H says:
      19 Aug19 August 11:31

      Looks like Tandem deliberately block it.

      So it looks like for now I’ll use the Curve card. (or maybe the IHG card if I get close to the limits)

    • Lady London says:
      19 Aug19 August 11:44

      Curious as to why this would fail.
      Does it work with starling monzo monese n26 etc.?

    • Lady London says:
      19 Aug19 August 11:46

      Does anyone know can Revolut process a direct debit on Revolut incoming from the Eurozone?

  • Nick says:
    19 Aug19 August 10:47

    I am a huge huge fan!

    I recently got two offers from revolut to encourage travel bookings for a 10% reward and then a separate offer of 10% for a hotel booking, using one of their partner website.

    How will the 10% reward be provided. There is no real detail in the offer.

  • JT says:
    19 Aug19 August 11:27

    When I see Revolut, I just think of their patronising/single shaming advert a few years ago (remember that one about their customers ordering a single takeaway on Valentines Day and asking “you OK hun?”). Maybe it’s petty of me, but because of this I can’t ever see myself wanting one of their products.

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