Travellers have always lament about the ridiculous exchange rate bank credit card charges when they travel overseas. This has changed over the past 2 years with the introduction of multi currency wallet bank debit/credit cards. Although that allows you to exchange that to the standard currencies like USD, GBP, AUD, NZD non controlled currencies, the exchange rate is usually 2% to 3% higher than the spot rate (those rates you see on google or bloomberg).
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Nowadays, we are no longer tied down to bank issued debit/credit cards for such transactions local or overseas. Revolut is just one of the latest to jump on this bandwagon with it’s Revolut Debit VISA.
Revolut is a e-money service which allow users to spend globally with close to spot exchange rates without hidden fees. It comes in the form of a virtual and a physical VISA card which you can top up in your local currency using other credit/debit cards. You can convert them to other supported 29 currencies in the app or just let it auto convert it for you. It comes in 3 different plans. For example, the standard plan offers
No fee exchange in 28 fiat currencies up to S$9000 per month
No fee International ATM withdrawals up to S$350 per month
In addition, the app also provide built in budgeting, split bill, scheduled and recurring payment and bank transfer. You can also create disposable virtual card for e-payment for one time payment. If you happen to lose the card, the payment feature can also be disable through the app.
So, how does Revolut perform against players like YouTrip, Transferwise and Crypto card ? We did a test in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. See next page.
[nextpage title=”Exchange rate compared between the 4 cards”]So, which card gives us a better deal. On 3rd Dec in Kuala Lumpur, we did a test, purchasing food or drinks with KLCC. We visited Cold Storage, Guardian. At the same period of time span of 1 hr at around 11am, the spot or interbank exchange rate registered on Yahoo Finance is 3.0553.
Apply for the Revolut card today.
Below is a electronic receipt generated by Revolut (in the app).
We bought a few other items from various stores that allows payment via VISA or Mastercard. Here are the results of the exchange rate being used. In this case, the higher the exchange rate means we pay lesser in SGD for item.
| Card | Exchange Rate (Spot Rate = 3.0553) |
| Revolut | 3.0537 |
| Transferwise | 3.0552 |
| YouTrip | 3.0386 |
| Crypto | 3.0474 |
Other than Crypto card, the other 3 cards all specify the exchange rate clearly in the app itself. Crypto just showed the charges in Ringgit and didn’t indicate the exchange rate. We derived the exchange rate of 3.0474 by checking the actual SGD deducted which came in the form of an email.
We noticed that both Revolut and Transferwise are very close to the spot rate. In fact, Transferwise is almost on the dot with just 1 pip difference. (3.0552 vs 3.0553).
Although Transferwise gets the better exchange rate, all transferwise transactions incur a fee. As our purchase amount was rather small, the fee was just 1 SGD cent. Thus if you were to include that into the formula, you will be getting a lower exchange rate to 3.0303.
If you are a weekend shopper, you ought to be aware of Revolt charges. According to their website,
At weekend (Friday 00:00 – Sunday 23:59) we apply a small mark up on the spot rate as the Forex markets are closed. We take the rate from Friday 00:00 and apply a 0.5% mark up on major currencies and 1.0% on other currencies to protect the company from potential losses due to a large fluctuation in the rate. For illiquid currencies Russian Ruble and Thai Baht, there is 1.5% mark up on weekend.
Imagine if we MYR on a weekend with SGD as the base currency and the spot rate was 3.0553, Revolut will charge you 1% and it will 3.0553 – 1% X 3.0553 = 3.0553 – 0.030553 = 3.0247
[nextpage title=”Conclusion”]In Conclusion, I think Revolut does have it’s plus point for the business travellers as it offers a better exchange rate during weekdays than weekends. The budgetting features are also very useful as it auto categories your spending.
If you need emergency cash, cash withdrawals are free up to the currency-equivalent of SGD 350 per month and then have a 2% charge after that with a Standard account. There is no S$5 surcharge for withdrawal overseas.
The basic plan already comes with the following :
No fee exchange in 28 fiat currencies up to S$9000 per month
No fee International ATM withdrawals up to S$350 per month
If you upgrade your Revolut account to Premium or Metal, you can raise your free withdrawal amounts to SGD 700 or 1050, respectively.
Revolut stands out from the rest of the cards as it allows you to withdraw your “cash” in the card to your bank account. The service is free but it will take a week to reach your destination bank account. Transferwise can do that within a few hours with a fee though. YouTrip and Crypto basically are really “prepaid” which you can’t really withdraw unless you use it to top up other cards.
So, wait no more and save on your online purchase or travel with the Revolut physical card by applying now at this link.