Revolut App Review — The Future Of Banking?

Revolut is championed as the new and improved alternative to traditional banks, offering much faster and cheaper international money transfers and providing a suite of useful modern features not offered by the legacy banking system.

Revolut puts their focus on customers and the control in their hands, allowing them access to a suite of tools designed to work for you to improve your security, flexibility, and convenience.

There are millions of customers that have been using the app since it released in 2015, and there have been very few problems that have surfaced for its reputation in this time, despite being a pioneer in the FinTech space.

In this Revolut App review, we will be looking at all the features and pricing that the app offers, and whether it’s right for you.

Revolut app review — What I thought

Revolut was extremely quick and simple to set up, which is always nice as most people don’t want to spend hours troubleshooting document verification or linking accounts.

All I had to do was deposit funds from an existing account and the app was ready to send me my free debit card. I could also immediately begin trading stocks and crypto if I wished. When Revolut says it wants to revolutionize banking, they weren’t kidding around!

Overall, the app is exceptionally easy to use and well presented while offering a range of very desirable features all in one place.

Usually, people would have a separate banking app, a crypto app, and an investment app for the best each has to offer. Amazingly, Revolut does all three exceptionally well, all while offering a range of additional perks and services.

I especially liked the “hub” as it was not only very aesthetically pleasing and well organized, but it provided a practical way to navigate the app for what you need at a single tap.

Simple things like these can really go far to help the user experience and it’s definitely appreciated. Opening a Revolut account is fairly easy, and there are some pros and cons to the platform.

The features of Revolut

One of the main features Revolut promotes is the ability to transfer money internationally cheaply and quickly, either for other people, or your own use.

This, while sounding relatively simple, is pretty ground-breaking when it comes to international finance, as banks are notorious for charging far and above the “Interbank” rate of foreign currency exchange

Revolut offers very cheap and speedy international money transfers within 3 days, or next day if using a Premium account. The unique selling point here is they use the Interbank rates and offer them to customers, so you’ll be hard pressed to find better exchange rates anywhere else.

On top of providing an exceptional Forex experience, Revolut also helps to manage your money at home by providing a series of money management and saving features. An AI-powered savings bot can help you automatically save based on targets you set, which are depositing into your “vault.”

These vaults can be simply pocket accounts, or savings accounts with interest returns, returns which are much higher than traditional banks currently offer. The highest tier offers over 0.6% per year.

Revolut also offers a wide range of other services in addition to its regular holding account functions, and packages them all into one easily accessible app. I’ve broken these features down into their own sections below for your convenience.

Investing with Revolut

While there’s a lot of different quality and standards among investing plantforms, from good to bad, Revolut gets it somewhere right in the middle.

The app touts that there are no hidden fees, and that’s clear, but some of the fees charged are a bit questionable. The one I have the biggest problem with is the “custody fees,” which amount to 0.12% of your portfolio on an annual basis, paid monthly.

While this is comparatively low to managed funds, the problem is this isn’t a managed fund as you choose and purchase stocks yourself, so I have no idea why Revolut customers are being charged this yearly “holding fee.”

Even so, the rest of the service is relatively good, offering hundreds of global stocks for purchase even with fractional shares. With a free account you get access to 1 free trade per month, with the rest having a 0.25% commission, which isn’t too bad for a broker fee. Higher tier paid accounts have more “free” trades, so if you are intending to invest thousands, or tens of thousands, getting the premium tiers will save you a lot of money in commissions.

I was very impressed with the quality of the investing section of the app, as it was definitely in-line with the quality of dedicated investment platforms, providing quality financial information, news and trading history and analysis.

Trading Crypto with Revolut

The Revolut app is surprisingly diverse, even offering the ability to buy, sell and exchange crypto at some of the best rates in the industry.

You have a really large range of crypto that you can use on Revolut, ranging from Bitcoin and Ethereum, to Doge and Cardano. There are over 30 cryptocurrencies available, which is a generous offering when you consider Revolut isn’t primarily a crypto exchange.

In addition to being able to buy, sell and hold crypto, the app offers a wide range of features which allow you to track useful information.

You can see price history and projections for specific coins and set alerts which will send you push notifications when a price is reached, so you won’t miss your price sell or buy target.

There’s a catch though that not everyone will be pleased about. You don’t actually hold the keys to the crypto you own. Revolut is essentially the custodian of any crypto you buy and mediates what you sell or exchange.

You can’t withdraw your crypto to external wallets or transfer it as you please since everything needs to be done within the app. This will definitely put off a lot of crypto enthusiasts for sure, as a big part of owning crypto is the decentralized nature of it.

However, for an average user, or someone who just wants to be able to spend their crypto, it’s a convenient option.

Premium subscriptions and costs

There are a couple of subscription tiers that Revolut provides, though there are also other charges relating to other services the app provides.

Revolut Free

This is your standard tier and provides access to everything on the Revolut platform, just without any of the perks.

• Free UK current account
• Free Uk IBAN account
• Free bank transfers
• Up to £200 free ATM withdrawals
• Access to interbank Forex rates
• Stocks access
• Crypto access

Revolut Premium

Premium costs £6.99 per month and gives you access to the bulk of Revolut’s benefits. In addition to the benefits from the free version you receive the following:

• Free disposable virtual cards
• Instant crypto access
• Unlimited Forex
• Overseas medical insurance
• Baggage and flight delay insurance
• Up to £400 free ATM withdrawals per month

Revolut Metal

At £12.99 per month, the metal tier seems much less value for money compared to the Premium tier in my opinion, as the immediate benefits seem to be mostly cosmetic rather than functional.

The cashback seems to be the main benefit here, and that will depend on how much you spend every month whether you get value out of that.

• Exclusive Revolut Metal card
• Free concierge service
• Up to 1% cashback on card payments
• £600 free ATM withdrawals per month

Is it worth it?

The free version of revolut is incredibly worthwhile as the services provided are as good as, if not better than some other platforms with much higher premium costs.

As a free user, you will basically need to pay for anything additional, such as additional stock purchases over the 1 free per month and pay for priority international currency transfer rather than getting it waived.

The Premium tier is the sweet spot in my opinion. It’s cheaper than a lot of traditional bank membership costs and offers way more useful and valuable features.

The benefits also extend to other areas of the app, such as having a higher free stock purchase limit, and better speeds and guarantees for crypto transfers.

In my opinion, the Metal tier is the most situational. For most people it really won’t provide anything worthwhile, but it does have some benefits.

This includes reduced Forex fees, increased commission-free trades, and higher interest rates provided, alongside the 1% cashback. This can provide great value for people spending and investing a lot of money.

Is Revolut safe?

With access to money, crypto, and cards, all of which are instant access, you might be wondering how safe the app is to use and whether it’s a good idea to transfer money to it. Fortunately, I can say it is extremely secure for a variety of good reasons.

First, Revolut is regulated by the FCA, and all funds it holds are ringfenced in Tiet 1 banking partners. This can give you peace of mind that your money isn’t going to simply disappear by itself.

With that in mind, Revolut offers users a lot of customization and control over their funds, even allowing customers to freeze and unfreeze their cards instantly, using the app if their card gets lost or stolen.

You can also enable or disable contactless payments, adding an extra layer of security for your card and device, which is of course protected by two factor authentication and biometric logins.

You can also make payments with “disposable virtual cards.” This is a park of Premium and Metal accounts which allow you to pay for things online with a card number that changes with every purchase, effectively making you immune to fraud.

This feature by itself is incredibly valuable with the prevalence of online fraud lately.

Conclusion

I found Revolut to be a fantastic app in almost every use case that it provides, whether you are looking to simply transfer cash, buy Bitcoin, save a bit of money, or invest. I’ve come across very few apps that not only provide all of these services, but provides them with a good standard across the board.

Revolut’s mantra of a new approach to banking is honestly very enticing in this age of fairly underwhelming legacy banks which offer security, but very little in terms of modern services or good value.

People who regularly travel and have to constantly pay out excessive foreign exchange fees will definitely find this app invaluable and that’s probably the main strength Revolut provides.

As a well-designed and exceptionally good value app for banking, saving and investment needs, I can very easily recommend Revolut to a wide range of people interested in an alternative to traditional banking.