Our team looked at the cost of exchanging currencies with 5 popular high street banks in the UK (HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, Natwest, and Nationwide) between 28 May 2024 and 31 May 2024, using their 'standard-equivalent' account offering (the one most comparable to our Standard account). We found that using Revolut to exchange money is on average up to 10 times cheaper, saving up to GBP 18 (and in reality, sometimes even more) when exchanging GBP 1,000 to 5 other currencies.

The data for the research was collected between 28 May 2024 and 31 May 2024, using various data sources including: the currency exchange rates available publicly on the websites of the banks listed, currency exchange calculators (also provided via those banks' websites), and where neither of these were available customer accounts which we used to simulate a currency exchange. We calculated the “cost to exchange” GBP 1,000 to EUR, USD, AUD, NZD, and PLN using each of the other providers. The “cost to exchange” includes any taxes, fees, or commissions applied by the provider, in addition to what we'll call their “currency exchange markup”. The “currency exchange markup” is the amount added to the mid-market rate by each provider when completing an exchange. Ideally, a buyer would exchange money at the mid-market rate, which is the midpoint between the buy and sell prices of any two currencies. This is the best scenario because providers usually have different buy and sell prices, and the further they are from the mid-market rate, the less money the buyer gets from the exchange. We then compared the average of the other providers’ “cost to exchange” GBP 1,000 to EUR, USD, AUD, NZD, and PLN with our own. We should note that the data was collected on weekdays. During this period, no additional fees apply to our exchanges as long as customers are within their plan’s fair usage limit. On weekends a 1% fee applies, regardless of a customer’s plan.

On average Revolut was 25x cheaper when exchanging GBP 1,000 to EUR, USD, AUD, NZD, and PLN on weekdays. By quoting ‘up to 10x cheaper’, we can be confident that this remains true, even when rates fluctuate. Revolut’s average cost to exchange was GBP 2, whereas the average cost to exchange at popular high street banks were GBP 47 when exchanging GBP 1,000 to EUR, USD, AUD, NZD, and PLN on weekdays. To make the claim 'Save up to GBP 18', we've considered the average cost of exchange for popular high street banks GBP 20, instead of GBP 47. This means our marketing will remain accurate even when the cost fluctuates.

Any blank entries in the above table represent where data was not available.