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Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

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Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#171

Post by cporios »

Robin_Message wrote: post #125
sschueller wrote: post #45

How do I cancel my account? Nothing in the FAQ and support chat in the app is trying to sell me a metal card. EDIT: found it: https://www.revolut.com/help/profile/i-want-to-terminate-my-... EDIT2: What a shit show, I have been trying to delete my account for more than 30 minutes now. When you chat through the app you are first connected to a bot which you need to tell you want to talk to a human, after waiting a whil…

Out of interest, do you feel so strongly that money laundering should be prevented that you are unwilling to do business with a company that might be not doing enough to prevent it? If not, what is it that Revolut has done according to this article that makes you want to quit?

I'm not the OP, but if you're interested in criticisms of Revolut, here's a complaint/rant letter (yes, physical letter) that I sent to them half a year ago: https://pastebin.com/L507bvf7

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#172

Post by Canada »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #51
entity345 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks' business is to manage money not to turn money away... It's not unethical behaviour. It's simple business. No-one in any business is going to ask where their customers got their money from, you just try to make customers spend their cash on you rather than a competitor. Banks have to comply with the law, of course, but beyond that you cannot expect them to hurt their business for no reason. This "holier than th…

If you truly don't understand why there are anti money laundering laws I suggest you go commit some crimes for large financial gain and then figure out what the hell to do with the money such that you can use it.

There's clearly two schools of thought debating here. One is that there should be a presumption of innocence, and the other is that there should be random warrantless checkpoints everywhere to catch the bad guys.

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#173

Post by lixtra »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #23
entity345 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks' business is to manage money not to turn money away... It's not unethical behaviour. It's simple business. No-one in any business is going to ask where their customers got their money from, you just try to make customers spend their cash on you rather than a competitor. Banks have to comply with the law, of course, but beyond that you cannot expect them to hurt their business for no reason. This "holier than th…

White collar crime continues to be something that they can get away with. IMHO the solution is not more rules but simply applying existing laws less leniently. There are a lot of bank executives that are not nearly worried enough about going to jail.

So banks operate a bit like open proxies on the internet (actually they are much more responsible). The administrators should go to jail then?

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#174

Post by keymone »

Geeek wrote: post #80
keymone wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately for us, reasonable people, there is no such thing for banks (and businesses in general) as "unethical behavior" when it comes to money. their responsibility is to increase shareholders' (or clients') value. they must comply with the law and often they don't or they devise clever workarounds, abusing judicial loopholes, and sometimes they get caught and then sometimes some scape-goat might end up in jail…

>when it comes to money. their responsibility is to increase shareholders' (or clients') value. That is not an empirical fact. It's a specific interpretation of how things should be in the world. Some see it that way and other see it differently.

It’s an interpretation of how things are. And unfortunately “let’s ostracize those who don’t behave ethically” doesn’t seem to be a scary enough stick if you consider that those banks have far more business with individuals that acquired their wealth in illegal ways and give zero shits about ethics.

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#175

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

saiya-jin wrote: post #121
baby wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App only. Everything is free. Budgetting. Security. Traveling. Splitting bill or sending money. The reasons are usually infinite.

Yeah, real blessing for travelling it seems - for last 2 years, every time we travel somewhere, we meet somebody (young, from Europe) who has some issues withdrawing money/paying with Revolut. Wasting hours running around town finding which ATM/branch would work with some obscure semi-bank account. It has its benefits, but travelling around the world currently doesn't seem like one.

I travel quite a lot and I've had a few problems paying with the Revolut card, but not more than with my traditional bank credit cards (for example a few years ago, my card from a normal bank wouldn't work in Qatar, to this day I don't know why).

I have learned on my own skin that travelling with a single card is not a good idea. I always have two (plus some hard cash just in case). But Revolut has became my first choice to pay abroad because it charges no commission when paying with foreign currency (I suppose they make some money by tweaking exchange rates, but so do normal banks, and I have checked in practice that Revolut is much cheaper). So even if it's not perfect, I would say travelling around is and advantage.

By the way, what I don't understand about Revolut is why they never charged me the tips I paid when I was in New Orleans last summer... they had this weird tipping system at restaurants where you would first pay the raw prices, and then you would write the tip manually on a piece of paper and they were supposed to charge it later on, except they never did.

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#176

Post by saiya-jin »

nullify88 wrote: post #140
saiya-jin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, real blessing for travelling it seems - for last 2 years, every time we travel somewhere, we meet somebody (young, from Europe) who has some issues withdrawing money/paying with Revolut. Wasting hours running around town finding which ATM/branch would work with some obscure semi-bank account. It has its benefits, but travelling around the world currently doesn't seem like one.

Where do you travel? The cards are on the Visa or Mastercard network so I'd expect the majority of ATMs to support Revolut.

south america, asia in these cases (bolivia, argentina, indonesia were the last ones)

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#177

Post by slavoingilizov »

spectramax wrote: post #155
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature for both Monzo and Revolut, is that when you use the card to pay for something, the app notifies you immediately. Sometimes it's fast enough that you have confirmation of the transaction before the merchant does. _edit_ I didn't mean to imply that this was _unique_ to only Monzo and Revolut worldwide. But it is unusual in the UK - it is it is something that regular UK Big banks don't do, or are rus…

Amex app does this. Instantly.

No it doesn't. Apple Pay can notify you if you've connected the Amex there, but the notification doesn't come from Amex app, at least on iOS.

Edit: It seems the functionality is there, but it doesn't work for Contactless, which is the majority of transactions I've done.

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#178

Post by jypepin »

ucha wrote: post #136
jscholes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Revolut is the only bank I know of that does free fx conversions, it's a huge feature and money saver for people that have bank accounts in different countries and currencies. Try TransferWise borderless.

Transferwise charges 0.5% for fx conversions as far as I know.

pretty sure Revolut actually uses transferwise for fx transfers

edit: my bad, seems like I'm confused with something else but can't figure out what!

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#179

Post by umeshunni »

thomasjudge wrote: post #150
ucha wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not going to happen. This schadenfreude is sad and hard to understand. You're comparing companies that were criminal enterprises that produced no value to a real company that has millions of happy and real customers. Their app has a 4.9 rating on the app store...

This kind of exemplifies the classic startup tension between playing by the rules and ignoring the rules for the sake of moving fast, breaking things, and capturing market share. Paul Carr on Uber: " Laws don't exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society." https://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/

Or more accurately, they exist to preserve existing monopolies that have lobbied for regulatory barriers to market entry.

Re: Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy

#180

Post by pbalau »

tomalpha wrote: post #137
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature for both Monzo and Revolut, is that when you use the card to pay for something, the app notifies you immediately. Sometimes it's fast enough that you have confirmation of the transaction before the merchant does. _edit_ I didn't mean to imply that this was _unique_ to only Monzo and Revolut worldwide. But it is unusual in the UK - it is it is something that regular UK Big banks don't do, or are rus…

I (think I) have that with an Amex card linked to Apple Pay. I get the iOS notification instantly when I pay for something with the card, whether in person or online. Is this something more? (I'm a potential adopter if so)

Talking about Revolut (and I have the Metal package):

1) good fx rate, I think it's google exchange rate with no fees for converting from/to various currencies

2) really easy transactions between friends (makes it really easy to settle up our holiday bills, could have an integration with Splitwise...)

3) almost instant feedback in the app about purchases

4) really nice analytics

5) virtual (unlimited?) cards, each with their own limit: I have a virtual card for my online purchases and my physical card has online purchases disabled

6) despite what others said, I've found the customer support to be all right

7) traveling insurance

8) (don't remember the exact amount) cheap-ish device insurance (eg for my phone)

9) metal card (as in, not a piece of plastic)

10) accounts in a shitload of currencies (used gbp, euro and usd so far)

11) contactless (but well, all cards seem to be like that)

12) (not using this) one can buy crypto coins via the app

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