Challenger bank Revolut introduced a new limit on foreign exchange offering for its free plan.
It is reducing the amount users can exchange for another currency without a fee from £5,000 to £1,000 per month, with fees also doubling for weekend transfers. This move has already provoked claims that the fast-growing fintech is now acting like a regular bank.
Read also: Leaked messages from Revolut’s CEO Nikolay Storonsky address the job cut accusations
However, Premium and Metal cardholders still have unlimited exchange, as they always have. This could also mean that Revolut is trying to motivate their customers to upgrade their account into a subscriber mode.
So far Revolut customers were also able to take advantage of the interbank exchange rate on weekdays with a 0.5% markup added to currencies at weekends. This is now increasing to 1%.
Revolut announced this in an email to its customers: “As you probably know, if you exchange more than our free exchange limit in a month, you pay a fee. This limit is decreasing to £1,000 each month (which, our research shows, most of you won’t hit anyway). Above that limit, our fee will stay the same at just 0.5%, and we’ll let you know if an exchange will be subject to a fee.”
Revolut says it will remind the user if a transfer he or she is about to make will incur a fee.
A spokesperson for Revolut said on this: “We’ve spoken to thousands of our customers to better understand how they are using Revolut. What we’ve learnt is that more of our customers are now using Revolut as their primary account, not just as a travel card.”
“Less than 3 percent of our 12 million customers come close to using the current free FX limit, so the vast majority of our customers will not see any increase in fees. Our Premium and Metal customers will continue to have unlimited FX, as they always have.”
