UPDATE 24 June: Wise vs Revolut - transfer speed

It’s a good question Jwall, and I’m not sure of the answer off hand - I’ll have to check.
As you say, it was not required, but Wise is now a bank - and as there’s nothing to lose by declaring it (it never has much in it for long) best to do so even if not strictly necessary.

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Phew, you saw it too! I was starting to question my own sanity. I knew memory played tricks, and I defo can get stuff wrong, but I didn’t think I was inventing stuff! Not yet at any rate!

As my last Wise transfer into my local French bank still took hours, I thought I’d try Revolut.

I managed to transfer sterling from my UK bank into Revolut - the transfer took about 10 minutes. I then converted to Euros and started the transfer to my local French bank.
There is a helpful dashboard to let you track the progress. However, it has been stuck on ‘leaving for recipient’s bank’ for about 3 hours now, so it looks as it if’s not going to be any faster than Wise.

However, I did get 0.3% more Euros for my Pounds with Revolut so that’s good :slight_smile: even though I don’t have them yet :disappointed:

How strange. I’ve only ever had that happen once, some months back. Always takes seconds.

Hi Sue,
If you read the thread you’ll see that’s what this is about. Many of us were used to Wise transfers happening reliably in seconds, but earlier this year they started taking anything from seconds to days with no warning. I am pleased to hear that you have not experienced problems with them - but I suspect it’s only a matter of time :wink:

I’ve noticed that Revolut, perhaps because of their previous compliance issues, seem to have been sending more things to manual review that are out of the ordinary. Anything I do as part of my regular patterns sails through immediately but when I suddenly decide to send an odd amount at an odd hour of the night it’s more likely that the algorithms will send it for (what I assume is ) manual review and it takes a little longer. But as long as it’s vaguely within my usual patterns it is always an immediate thing. Which is good I guess, it just shows they’re not solely relying on machine learning like a lot of fintech companies, to the detriment of everyone on occasion.

I have once and in fact I think I posted here, if I remember. I wonder if it also is an issue with our French banks? Also, I’m rarely sending myself more than £200-300 and in fact may send that sort of amount several times in a month rather than shift one large amount. I wonder if there is more likely to be a review for larger sums?

If it is your first transaction to your french bank via Revolut it may just be your French bank doing anti money laundering checks. I have just done my monthly pension transfer to CA and it took seconds. Hope it gets resolved quickly for you.

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Thanks, @digitracker
It’s the first time I’ve used Revolut to send money to my French bank so you have probably hit the clou on the tête…

If your Revolut account is still the LT IBAN version perhaps but I wonder if that has now changed with the Revolut FR IBAN accounts…
Certainly, we do not seem to be experiencing delays with transfers to our Banque Pop account… I’ll transfer some Euros on Monday afternoon to check how long it takes (BP closed Monday mornings so might skew timings).

[quote="jwall,
I was stunned when I saw one go through in seconds
[/quote]

The best ones are when it comes in before you have even thought of doing the transfer :slight_smile:

@digitracker in fact, I did it today - sent 500€ from Revolut FR to our BP account at 16:36 and when I went in to the BP account at 16:40 the 500€ was there, so as much instantaneous as it could be - given the time it took to close the Revolut app and navigate through the security checks to access the BP account on line.

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Thanks for the update, I think I will now cancel my UK Revolut account and reopen a new French Revolut account as everything seems to be running smoothly on the French IBAN.

@Mat_Davies is facing issues waiting for his (I think) LT account to be offered an upgrade to the FR IBAN.
I’m not certain that cancelling your GB account will actually work that way. I think you need to contact Revolut in the app and ask for advice before doing anything to avoid being compromised.

I had been waiting for Revolut to contact me about moving my LT account to FR. I only use the account intermittently. Earlier this week I noticed there was an icon on a screen (Accounts?) offering a switch to an FR account. A few clicks, acceptance of new terms, etc and I had an FR account and IBAN.

My Revolut standard account has always been registered at my French address with French tax residency. I suspect the French address/tax residency is a requirement needed to be offered a FR Revolut account,

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I will hang onto my UK Revolut for a while till the FR IBANs are a bit more mature.

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ooops!

Not sure yet how (or if) this impacts people who requested the change from the LT entity to a FR IBAN account themselves… needs a more detailed look.
We both had an email today about the change.

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There’s a very small chance he might be accurate about this, but having kept an eye on his bizarre and slightly unhinged posts he’s clearly, well, I’ll say no more because it’s rather obvious… :roll_eyes::joy:

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yes, I the thought occurred to about that too @kirsteastevenson

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Interesting background…

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