Careful with Revolut and Credit one. Account Closed.

[xReMaKe]

Just want to alert anyone, so that this doesn’t happen to anyone. Recently a company called Revolut opened their doors to the American market. I opened an account, and everything seemed well; however, I made a payment from my revolut account to my credit one account. I noticed the payment was taking longer to process and contacted revolut about 4-5 times about this issue. Each time they said to just keep waiting since on their end they didn’t see a charge yet, and that it was fine, that there’s no reason why the payment would not go through. Tried contacting credit one literally every day since I was skeptical, but with what’s going on (covid-19) they’re unreachable.

First thing that happened was what I expected! The payment was returned. I figured that would happen and was okay with any fee that would be associated; however, they just immediately closed my account. In the email it states, “this account has been closed due to “unauthorized payment activity”.

Wow. Wasn’t expecting that at all, and that sucks big time since this was my credit repair card. Be careful to those planning on paying their credit one card with revolut. Don’t want to see this happen to anyone else. Now to search for a credit card, which sucks since I wanted to garden till at least September. Unless there’s a card I can find that soft pulls smh.

[AverageJoesCredit]

Never be ok with a return payment. Thats the kiss of death in credit and with creditors. No fee is worth a return check if you can prevent it. 

Never heard of Revolut. If you csn please enlighten the community as it might help someone from trying them out if they dont need to. Thanks

[xReMaKe]

Yeah, initially I was expecting it to go through, but once I saw how long it took, I knew it’d come back. Wanted to alert someone at credit one, but it’s impossible to reach them.

Revolut originated in Europe and became quite the sensation since it gave you a lot of the features online banks give you, while also being able to trade stocks, cryptocurrency exchange, fee-free currency exchange which is why I use it. It’s nice to travel and be able to convert your money to whatever currency that country uses without a fee. It’s very convenient since my significant other is overseas finishing a semester and if we need to send money back and forth, we can do that instantly (paypal speeds) without acquiring any fees.

They also have premium memberships which have metal bank cards and come with free disposable virtual cards, global travel insurance, airport lounge access and a lot more though since it’s a premium membership you’re paying a monthly subscription for all those benefits. They recently opened their doors here in USA so I decided to try them out.

Anyways, considering it’s basically like a bank, with a routing number, and account number – and since I talked to staff and they said they never had issues with making a payment to a credit card, I said okay, I’ll use the left over money I have in Revolut to pay the remaining 50 dollar balance on my credit one, and the everything I explained in the first post happened.

[notmyrealname23]

When I tried to be a Revolut customer some time ago it was because they offered a way to do debit cards where you can deposit dollars and withdraw euros or pounds (or vice versa) without fees. They weren't equipped to be hooked up to US banks for ACH transfer at the time though so I blew them off (and now that SoFi does universal ATM rebates on their debit card I wouldn't need Revolut anyway; I was looking for ways to use debit cards overseas without international transaction fees).

OP: try OpenSky. Secured card, modest annual fee, grace period, NO CREDIT PULL. Their app and customer service isn't the most amazing ever but it gets the job done (you can hook it to a bank account and pay in the app for instance, see charges and statements). I had it and I think it's fine if you want to have a year or two starter card. OpenSky WILL NOT graduate you to unsecured; you will need to close it and get another, better card at some point, but they don't do games like the super shady companies do like monthly fees, no grace period, etc.

[Anonymous]

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@xReMaKe wrote:

First thing that happened was what I expected! The payment was returned. I figured that would happen and was okay with any fee that would be associated; however, they just immediately closed my account. In the email it states, “this account has been closed due to “unauthorized payment activity”.

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This to me suggests that something happened on your end that caused it. 

I would never be OK with a fee unless I did something wrong. Did you have enough in your account? Why were you OK with the fee?

[xReMaKe]

@cardnut since I had an experience similar to this with Simple Bank around 2013. Don't remember if it was Electronic payments that simle couldn't do at that time, but the same thing happened. They never took the money; however, I called the bank which I belive was Chase, they understood everything and I was able to make a payment with another bank. 

When I say that I was okay with a feem it's because Credit One charges a fee for basically anything you do. Even making a expedited payment. So I was already gearing up for the money to be returned and get a fee. The revolut account doesn't have much money, about 1000, but that should be way more than enough to pay a 50 dollar blance.  

[xReMaKe]

@notmyrealname.

I have a paypal credit account. I'm thinking of two options. 

1. Just have that account and continue to build credit with one account, don't know if it's reccomended to have more than one to build, or if one is okay. If it's okay, I'll stay with this one for at least June/July and see where my scores are then. 

2. If another account will help me faster, take the bullet and try for a secured card with Discover if they accept me, and I've heard eventually they upgrade you. 

[Anonymous]

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@xReMaKe wrote:

@cardnut since I had an experience similar to this with Simple Bank around 2013. Don't remember if it was Electronic payments that simle couldn't do at that time, but the same thing happened. They never took the money; however, I called the bank which I belive was Chase, they understood everything and I was able to make a payment with another bank. 

When I say that I was okay with a feem it's because Credit One charges a fee for basically anything you do. Even making a expedited payment. So I was already gearing up for the money to be returned and get a fee. The revolut account doesn't have much money, about 1000, but that should be way more than enough to pay a 50 dollar blance.  

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OK, thanks for clarifying.

I did have a bank that would only allow transfers to and from those that I got approved with by that bank. They limited me to just 2 external banks. Every once in a while I'd forget and do a pull from them, and then when the funds were returned, I remembered they weren't one of the maximum of 2 that they approved. 

It happened last in November, and then I moved the rest of the money out of it, and closed the account. It's a no-name bank like yours, so I decided its best to stay away from no-names and opened a Barclay's account.

[hawkins]

Revolut was not designed for that. Always use your regular bank account. Also you wont see it now but you were just given a huge gift. Credit One is a horrible lender that would of fee harvested you too death. The wound will heal from this and you will be free of those predatory A""""""s! I will let you fill in the middle. Discover and Capital One have good secured cards that will take you far if you play the game right. Best of luck to you either way.

[longtimelurker]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@xReMaKe wrote:

@cardnut since I had an experience similar to this with Simple Bank around 2013. Don't remember if it was Electronic payments that simle couldn't do at that time, but the same thing happened. They never took the money; however, I called the bank which I belive was Chase, they understood everything and I was able to make a payment with another bank. 

When I say that I was okay with a feem it's because Credit One charges a fee for basically anything you do. Even making a expedited payment. So I was already gearing up for the money to be returned and get a fee. The revolut account doesn't have much money, about 1000, but that should be way more than enough to pay a 50 dollar blance.  

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OK, thanks for clarifying.

I did have a bank that would only allow transfers to and from those that I got approved with by that bank. They limited me to just 2 external banks. Every once in a while I'd forget and do a pull from them, and then when the funds were returned, I remembered they weren't one of the maximum of 2 that they approved. 

It happened last in November, and then I moved the rest of the money out of it, and closed the account. It's a no-name bank like yours, so I decided its best to stay away from no-names and opened a Barclay's account.

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FWIW: Revolut isn't exactly a no-name bank, it's a big shiny thing (UK's most valuable Fintech startup) that just opened in the US.   However, it has already got some bad press, I don't think this happened to OP but still:

(From Wiki):

Revolut, in common with traditional financial institutions, uses algorithms to identify money laundering, fraud and other criminal activity, but unlike the rest of the banking industry, Revolut's algorithms additionally trigger the automated suspension of accounts. Revolut explains that "the system is programmed to temporarily lock an account and place it in a queue, until one of our compliance agents can review the case".[34]

It is increasingly reported that Revolut's algorithms suspend a growing number of accounts in error for weeks or months at a time because Revolut does not have sufficient compliance agents to review the automated suspensions, and that while Revolut pays no interest on the large suspended balances, Revolut can earn interest on the funds in wholesale money markets.