Revolut Megathread.

Has anyone on here had Revolut restrict their account? I have been using my Revolut for a while as my main account - had the account since 2019. I recently was transferred to an Irish IBAN and was in the process of setting up my account to receive funds using the new IBAN and SWIFT. The Swift code returned an error when i was using it and i contact their in app chat to see why this might be the case and was immediately sent an email saying that my account was restricted and under review... More alarming is the following message in the chat i was having.

Also, since your account is currently being reviewed, I would like to inform you that the following actions are restricted on your account until the review is completed: 

❌ Inbound and outbound transfers - (to send or receive funds)

❌ Crediting the account (top-up)

❌ Card payments

❌ ATM withdrawals

❌ Exchange funds into you base currency

❌ Terminating your account

❌ Selling commodities e.g. gold/silver

❌ Selling your cryptocurrency

↩️ any transfers made to your account will automatically be rejected and returned to the original sender.

As i use the account for my salary I am now in a position that i cant get paid this month and therefore cant pay any bills mortgage etc until the restriction is lifted. They wont tell me how long it will take, what i need to do nor what i can do in the mean time for access to money. All shared vaults with my wife are also blocked so we cant access any shared funds either! Has anyone come across this and if so how long did it take to lift the restriction. Any help appreciated.

You are not going to see a reliable updates via Chat on this as the actual review is done by a different team that is not in regular real time contact with the people that reply to chats.

This looks like an AML review of your account giving that they completely blocked any transactions and even will reject any incoming transfers.

The fastest way to engage with a real human being is immediately make a formal complaint (Info here), you can also try this e-mail address: formalcomplaints@revolut.com . They claim they respond in a couple of days, but it can take up to 15 days.

That way you create a Papertrail you can use later if you need to complain to the Financial Ombudsman to get your funds back in case Revolut closed your account and you don't want to wait ages for a refund.

Best is to get relevant paperwork ready (passport, proof of residence, proof of funds like Tax Return) and as you seem to receive money via SWIFT you might also want to have a proof why you are getting funds from outside the EU.

Worst case is they will close your account, best case is the relevant team is happy and the suspension is lifted quickly.

I got hit with a while ago right after the Irish IBAN got issued but I managed to get it lifted within a few hours, but others had their account in limbo for weeks.

Good luck, I hope you get access to your funds back soon.

So AIB are telling me that Revolut have accepted responsibility for the problem, which was due to not sending the credit card number reference properly with the transfer. It seems unlikely, but sure…

Has anyone else heard anything different?

I got a letter telling me AIB investigated and confirmed it wasn't their fault and contact Revolut if I need more information. Didn't say anything about credit card not coming through

I think the issue is that there are if I recall correctly 3 different reference fields in a SEPA transfer and AIB and Revolut are not using the same fields when it comes to transfers, which is why the payment to the credit card accounts are hitting an issue.

Checking some quick documents there are 3 field:

• Payment description
• Payment reference
• End-to-end id

Now if I recall from an earlier post, AIB expect the reference credit card number in the End-toEnd ID field for payments on the "domestic" payment account which they call reference field, however the info you add to revolut in Reference is the Payment Description field not the end-to-end id and hence AIB gets something they are not set up to deal with.

So, if you make a transfer to some other bank which displays the payment description as reference on your account statement, yes, you will see the right numbers, but AIB is looking at the end-to-end id.

Same for Bunq, the description field they use is being transmitted as Payment description.

I assume AIB has set up the "domestic" payment account to look at end-to-end and hence it's not getting something in there and it rejects, and they have set up the "foreign" payment account to look at payment description, but it rejects irish IBAN's because those don't have payment description.

This is why you did not have any problems paying from your LT IBAN, it came onto the "foreign" reference account which looked at the right field and hence went into your credit card.

So as long as Bunq/Revolut are not using End-to-end id this will continue.

I know that some banks are offering both payment description and end-to-end id in their online transactions, but Revolut/Bunq don't.

So AIB is not totally wrong when they claim it's a Revolut issue but it's only a revolut issue because AIB is not looking at all fields and the Irish banking sector has decided to use End-to-End rather than payment description.

At least that is my view, but there are people on here, which will be in a way better position to explain this.

It doesn't impact referencing on Revolut sides, it impacts AIB.

When you pay to the "foreign" reference account they look for the payment description field, check if it matches a credit card number and if it's from a foreign account and voila it will be processed as credit to your account. Somebody might even doing this manually. God only knows it's AIB!

When you pay to the "domestic" reference account they look at the End-to-end id (which is what Irish Banks are using to transmit the payment reference) and the computer picks up your reference and credit to your card happens as its automated.

Now you come with a Revolut LT IBAN on the "foreign" reference account, and all is well as there is a payment description. All good. Computer sees what it expects - foreign bank sending and reference in payment description field. Credit to your account happens.

Now you come with a Revolut IE IBAN but there is nothing in the "End-to-end id" because Revolut does not submit anything in that field. But computer says this is from an "irish" bank, so there must be something in "end-to-end". Hence AIB does not know where to credit the money too. Which is why they first accept the payment into the reference account but then are unable to credit it further.

There are 2 simple solutions, Revolut start using "end-to-end" when payments are sent from the Irish IBAN or AIB starts using modern banking apps that allow to look at all 3 fields independent which reference account the payment lands on.

Now again open to correction, it might be that the fields are used different but that is my understanding.

I had a similar issue when I tried to pay my PTSB visa card years ago from my German account, it returned, but my German bank offers all three fields to put info in there, so once I put the card number into the "end-to-end" field all was fine.

I phoned AIB and they mentioned the end to end id that was referenced earlier. They also said they had 16 complaints about this and had been in contact directly with Revolut on how to fix.

I need to open up a revolut account. Apart from my passport,do I need additional documents?

Many thanks, they can't reactivate my old account. I must open a new one.

Has anyone figured out a way to get spare change turned on when using a joint account? Works fine for personal accounts but is it a feature for joint accounts yet?

Genuinely I’ve never had a problem with PTSB. Online/app banking is fine. The 2FA has worked perfectly every time. Use Apple Pay rather than google pay and never have to reset.

Appreciate others may feel differently but very happy with them

What does Avant money mastercard offering have to do with the AIB Visa card issue? This is like saying N26 is the solution to paying your AIB credit card as they don't have issues with bounced payments... in addition you are only offering a 15k line of credit.

The above post has a sense of an employee pimping the product to be honest.

Sure just at a considerably higher APR for those that don't clear it monthly.

True