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Revolut is offering InsideFlyer readers a free card to help you save money on your travels. This means you won’t have to pay the normal £4.99 delivery fee (you do need to up your account with at least £10 – but if you want the card you’d presumably be doing that anyway).
What is Revolut?
In their own words,
“(Revolut is) An app that is revolutionizing the world of personal finance as a digital banking alternative. Revolut is an app for your global lifestyle”.
It offers a contactless card that allows you to:
- Spend all over the world with no fees.
- Exchange currencies at the interbank rate.
- Get money at any ATM with no commissions (up to £200 per month, then 2%).
- Open multi-currency accounts
- Make payments and divide accounts with friends.
- Monitor your expenses and even buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and much much more.
How to claim your free Revolut card
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Insert your mobile number.
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Follow text message URL to download Revolut on the Google Play or Apple App Stores via the link.
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Open an account (takes 30 seconds).
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Top up £10/€10.
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Select and order Free Card [Standard Delivery].
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Verify your identity (Tap more -> Profile -> Verify identity). This means your Revolut card will be ready to use as soon as it arrives.
Downsides
I haven’t had chance to test it myself yet, so there may be other issues too, but the main thing I’ve noticed is that there are fees if you make transactions over the weekend:
“During the weekend (Friday 23:59 – Sunday 23:59) as the Forex markets are closed, we take the rate from Friday 23:59 and apply a markup of 0.5% on major currencies and 1.0% on other currencies. Please be aware that we pull rates from our provider, and they are obligated to present us with updated rates whenever they are informed of a change from one of their suppliers. This means that the weekend rate may fluctuate and not be the same as the exchange rate we use from Friday.
Note that for a few currencies there is always a markup, regardless of when the transaction occurs: “For THB and RUB, we apply a small 1.5% markup on the exchange rate. For UAH we apply a 1% markup.”
Bottom line
One of the big oversights in my current credit card ‘portfolio’ is one offering zero fees on foreign transactions, so Revolut looks like a great alternative if you are in the same situation.
Obviously you need to remember to top up you Revolut account, but that’s not really much more inconvenient than keeping an eye on a credit card account. I’d rather save my credit card applications (and the hit on my credit score) for cards with good sign up bonuses at the moment, so will be giving Revolut a spin.
Have you already tried Revolut? – what did you think?
Million Dollar question.
How do you top up? Does it allow credit card without fee’s, particularly Amex
I use auto top up facility though app and never need to worry when I am away of running short of money. It’s great
My experience signing up was disastrous. I want to cancel but I can’t unless I wait 9 hours for a chat agent! How can you deal with a financial institution you can’t reach? Then, they took double the sign up amount requested, £10, by processing the transaction twice. Finally I discover you can only withdraw £400 a month from ATMs which is not close to most travellers’ needs. Even if it worked, the card would be useless to me, but their system is buggy and their customer response time absurd. I’m actually surprised that such an untrustworthy system is being promoted on your site.
Hi Christopher – thanks for sharing your experience!
As I say, I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I have had friends recommend it and it certainly looks pretty good in theory – so I was happy to share the offer.
I’ll post a review of my own experience after a few months of using it, but obviously an individual can get lucky/unlucky so it’s really important to hear from readers too. Got to say, I don’t like the sound of those wait times!
Joe, my situation with Revolut is getting worse and worse. After I tried to cancel and retrieve the money they had double-dipped from my card, they first told me I had to wait 9 hours for a response. Then a message said they would get back to me in 96 hours. Now that message has been replaced by one offering no human response but telling me to look at their FAQs instead which do not offer a way to cancel or retrieve the money they took from my card in error (I trust). This leaves me with no option but to accept my money is lost or put a lawyer on them. I am a TV director so I even wrote to their Media department, again no reply. People trust what you write Joe so please post a warning not to deal with this outfit which appears to be either a rip-off or at minimum its management has lost control.
Hi Christopher – really sorry to hear that!
Is it ok if I send you a quick email using the email address you used to comment? – We should be able to get your situation in front of someone relatively senior at Revolut I would’ve thought, and hopefully get it sorted.
That would be great Joe, thank you! There are a lot of posts on various sites saying their Customer Service is almost non existent!
No worries! – I just emailed you now.
Is this offer still valid? After clicking it I cannot see if it still works or if it doesn’t. Can you please specify if (and when) this offer expires?
Definitely still live – there isn’t a set end date, so we’ll just update the links if/when that changes.
Hello, I registered online, requested a card but was told to pay £5.00 fee. I thought it’s suppose to be free?
Hi Bob,
Did you top up your account with £10+ first before trying to order the card? The £5 delivery fee should definitely be removed when you click to order your card after doing that – let me know if the delivery fee is still showing up and I’ll get Revolut to take a look.
I have a Halifax Clarity credit card that doesn’t charge the 3% or so commission that other issuers do and doesn’t ask for money up front either. It also gives 56 days interest free. I haven’t checked how the Mastercard rates compare to the interbank ones but I’ve had no trouble with it since I signed up nearly three years ago.
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free £10
Sign up with this link and get a free Revolut card for awesome exchange rates abroad. https://revolut.com/referral/luisede9ez!metal
Sign up with my link and get €10 after your first purchase with your free Revolut card.
For every friend you invite, we will give you €10. They just need to sign up, verify their ID, add money via card or bank transfer, and order a physical card.
Bonus: We will give them €10, too! They just need to make their first card payment and wait for it to appear in the app as Completed, which can take up to 7 days. Get a free card too!
Sign up with my link and get €10 after your first purchase with your free Revolut
https://revolut.com/referral/marek1wot!a13221
OR
You get €30 and I get €30 for business customers
revolut.com/business?promo=ref30ire&ext=marek1wot
You can find out more information including terms and conditions on the Revolut blog.
Do this until 18.11.2019 to get reward.