Nothing wrong with their transfer processes. They’re great and I often find that my euros are in my French account in 8 seconds and the pounds are still in my UK a/c. 
It’s their ridiculous “verification” process that has been the nightmare for those of us who have been asked to do it.
I use Revolut and am very happy with how I get on. Transfers from UK bank to Rev GBP a/c > FX to € > Rev € a/c > Cred Mute a/c in very little more than the time it took to write this.
However, I am a bit nervous about taking up their saving a/c offer on the basis of, who else is offering these rates? How can they do it?
Once your initial top-up has been settled, your money will start working for you every single day. This means up to 3.92% annual interest, paid daily on EUR, 5.42% on USD, and 5.3% on GBP.*
Is this another e.g. of ‘if it looks too good to be true, it is’ ?
Unless you’re planning to deposit significant amounts, the monthly fee will take a large chunk, if not all, of your interest return. Unless of course, you’re already a premium member for the savings on transfer fees.
Wise started paying monthly interest on the balances and it was a pain in the proverbial as I ended up having to tot them all up and put them in the tax return and it really really wasn’t worth it. (They were very small because I didn’t have all that much in there. I now have zero because I wanted to get rid if the problem)
Revolut’s banking licence application was rejected by the UK so it’s not clear whether there would be any deposit protection eg FSCS
The revolut euro vault account with 1.19% interest is with Investec and pretty sure has the FSCS protection.
I quite enjoy revolut because it’s handy for buying euros and paying the tax bill.
I have though noticed some recent unusual behaviour when using the ‘limit order’ function. May as well post it here…
A limit order is when sets a target exchange rate to buy euro’s. e.g. £100 at 1.15 to get €115.
The rate is revolut’s rate which is 18 hundredths of a cent lower than the ‘real’ rate. So in the example, the transaction will only be done when the real rate hits 1.1518 or thereabouts - say 1.152
But last week I set an order for 1.15 at a time when Revolut’s rate was about 1.1484 - and the real rate was around 1.1503 and to my surprise it executed immediately. So Revolut’s ‘charge’ was just 3 hundredths of a cent.
Anyone noticed this? If you’re doing an immediate exchange you could just try a limit order for say 10 hundredths of a cent higher than the current rate.
So if Rev’s rate is showing as 1.152 try a limit order of 1.153 and see what happens…
If you’re interested, you can set up a limit order by tapping on the top right in the exchange window where it shows market order and the arrow. That brings up the menu.
In terms of experience with Wise, it looks like there is another change since I last used it.
I emptied my accounts (or pockets or whatever it is they call them) into a bank account of the matching currency and they both arrived immediately.
I then did a couple of transfers via Wise but from my UK bank account to my French account. Although they received the money instantly, they are not sending it for over 2 1/2 hours. I suppose I could get round this by putting the money into their pseudo accounts, converting it and then transferring it out but that is such a faff. Transfers from one bank account to another via them have always been instant before.
Also, their exchange rate is just a bit lower than e.g. PoundSterlingLive delares (and it hasn’t been before)
The other things I’ve noticed are that Wise now makes me tick a box accepting that if I cancel the transaction I may have to pay higher charges in future and also that they used to hold the exchange rate for a day or so while you were transferring the money to them - it’s now a couple of hours.
Wise is becoming less and less attractive…
Thank you for prodding the memory of reading and re-reading Megarry and the final feeling of satisfaction when I understood it!
Is Revolut just an app. or does it work on a laptop too? AngelaR’s experience of Wise is slightly putting me off, though I reckon my similar experience was because of CA’s systems rather than Wise’s.
It’s app and browser based, I have noticed Wise slowdown as well, but I do use both Wise and Revolut.
I do find I am using Revolut more now than I did before as it just seems a lot quicker.
My understanding is that Revolut has to have a phone app even if you can also use it on a laptop/desktop. Am I wrong about this? (I don’t do money things via my phone and don’t actually want to!)
The delays in money getting into CA accounts could well be at least partially down to their systems rather than Wise but a few months ago they arrived straight away. Also, the delays I mentioned above were definitely at the WIse end, because they stated the time at which they would be sending it. I think they are gradually evolving into something I really don’t like…
I thought Madame had it on her iPad but evidently it doesn’t work - she’s now using her phone app.
I think you can run apple apps on an apple MacBook which has apple chips
and revolut does have a browser
but I don’t think you can do transactions.
The app is good though, so give it a go?
The pound is recovering against the euro. We bought some at 1.155 early in the week - and then it went up (the usual @AngelaR !!). So last night I thought I’d try buying some at 1.16 and set an order - sure enough this morning at 10 ish it bought the euro’s.
I think the revolut maxed around 1.1610 at that time. I’t’s at 1.16 at this very moment.
Looks like I picked the right time to switch back to Apple then! Thanks.
There is never a wrong time to switch to Apple. 
Any time is the wrong time to switch back to the nanny state 
Haha!
I intend to keep a foot in both camps. I have a 2012 (Intel) Mini which is in daily use, and a PCS (small English supplier) Windows 11 laptop, which I left in France last time we were there 
My 5yo HP laptop seems constantly to be on the point of collapse (it started its decline after a year).
So far, I’m very impressed with the level of integration in Apple-land: it’s very much better than I ever managed with Win11 and Android.
Still pretty ticked that my SE/40 won’t boot up any more …
I’m all over the place with an android phone, an iPad Pro, Windows on the laptop and Linux on the desktop. I sometimes think about going iPhone but there are a couple of apps I use that are android only.
The longevity of Macs is amazing, I’m typing this on a 2010 Mac Pro which is still my main computer for file storage and everything except actual photo and video editing (for which I use a 2022 M1 Mac Mini - the 8GB base model, cheap as chips for its level of performance).
Microsoft?
You aren’t limited with your choice of software with Windows though my main pc is Linux and has been for over 20 years.