Revolut Metal Card Review – Is it Worth it?

I have been using the Revolut Metal card as my main card for over a year now and I got to confess to you – I really got hooked into it. Continue reading this Revolut Metal review to find out what I think about this Revolut plan.

Initially, I wasn’t convinced that Revolut Metal is worth the money; however, with the ongoing improvements to their Revolut Metal plan, the value for money is much better as you would expect.

In this Revolut Metal card, I will introduce you to all the perks, benefits, and features of the Revolut Metal plan and how it compares to other offers.

Let’s jump right into it.

Revolut Metal Advantages

The Revolut Metal card comes with tons of benefits such as:

• Best exchange rates for over 150 currencies
• Exchanging in 28 fiat currencies without limits
• No-fee ATM withdrawals in any currency up to £600 per month
• Overseas medical insurance
• Delayed baggage and delayed flight insurance
• Global express delivery
• Borrowing money
• Vaults
• Metallic debit card
• Disposable virtual cards
• LoungeKey Pass access
• No-fee lounge passes for you and three friends if your flight is delayed >1 hour
• Discounts with Revolut Metal Perks
• 1% cashback on all card payments
• Up to 5 junior accounts for kids

As you can see, the Revolut Metal plan targets a rather broad customer base.

It’s not only for travelers or business people but also for parents looking to teach their kids how to manage their budgets.

Revolut Metal isn’t only a debit card but the most user-friendly personal finance app I have ever used.

My Revolut Metal Experience

In this Revolut Metal review, I want to cover my personal experience with Revolut Metal as well as with the entire ecosystem that comes with it.

My experiences and opinions are based on how I used the card over the last 36 months.

Best Exchange Rates and Multicurrency Management

Revolut offers currently the cheapest way to pay for your expenses abroad or in different currencies. Most of my funds are stored in my EUR account. Over the course of the last few months, I traveled to Morocco, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and many European countries.

Apart from a small hiccup in Morocco, I have not had any issues with my Revolut Metal card. It turned out that my issues in Morocco were related to the ATM rather than the card itself.

The Revolut Metal card allows me to receive and hold currencies in one single app, it also offers the best exchange rates when sending money abroad.

If I have to make personal bank transfers in different currencies, I always use Revolut. The cost of the transfer was always cheaper as compared to TransferWise which comes with a TransferWise fee.

Foreign Currency Exchange Fees

Regardless of what type of Revolut plan you are using, Revolut charges a mark-up between 0.5% and 1% during your currency exchange on the weekend.

Here is an overview of the currency exchange fees.

• USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, CAD, NZD, CHF, JPY, SEK, HKD, NOK, SGD, DKK, PLN, and MXN: 0% during fx hours (weekdays), 0.5% when the markets are closed (weekend)
• THB, RUB, UAH: 1% during fx hours (weekdays), 2% when the markets are closed (weekend)
• all other foreign currencies: 0% during fx hours (weekdays), 1% when the markets are closed (weekend)

This is something most users aren’t aware of and the information is also not as easy to find. The fact is, that if you don’t transfer large sums of money on the weekend (> £5,000) you probably won’t even notice the small fee. Last year when I was on a trip to Iceland, I run a small experiment and paid my expenses on the weekend with the N26 You (Premium) and Revolut Metal card. The difference was less than 10 cents, which is zero to nothing.

Online Purchases

If you are thinking about getting the Revolut Metal plan, you will likely use the card or the virtual cards to make online purchases. In most cases, you will need to verify the transactions in our Revolut app.

You might be wondering, why I am mentioning this, as the two-factor verification is nothing new.

Well, it’s something that should not be taken for granted.

While Revolut’s two-factor verification for online purchases works like a charm, the N26 feature has tons of bugs and it’s almost impossible to make online purchases – at least that’s the case with my N26 card.

A great feature of Revolut is also Revolut’s disposable virtual card. Note that those cards might not get accepted by every merchant, however, in most cases they work well and it helps to protect your Revolut Metal card information as you don’t need it when shopping around on the internet. You can access the virtual card through your Revolut App.

Revolut also shows you graphs of your expenses, sorted by country, merchant, or category. A really nice feature if you ask me.

Revolut Volts and other Features

As a Revolut user, you can create volts that help you set money aside. It’s a simple feature that will put your money in a “vault” so the balance won’t appear in your regular account that you use for daily expenses.

Revolut’s volts do not lock your funds. You can access them at any time. There is also no interest on your funds in your vaults. The sole purpose is to save up some money aside. You can either tell Revolut to transfer each month a certain amount to your vaults or do a one-time transfer. An interesting option is also to let Revolut round up your expenses and add the spare cash to your vault.

I have been using this feature quite a lot and it really helps to maintain an emergency fund or reach my financial goals.

Revolut also supports Google Pay or Apple Pay so you don’t even need to carry the card with you if you prefer to do so.

Apart from vaults, you also have access to airport lounges. This feature is quite useless in my opinion. Access to almost any lounge costs around £25 per person. You can buy the access at any lounge, so booking it via Revolut doesn’t provide much value.

Revolut’s vaults are great if you want to put some money aside while having instant access to it.

Revolut Metal Cashback

You can earn up to 1% cashback by using the Revolut Metal card. Metal plan users will receive 0.1% cashback on all card payments within Europe and 1% cashback on card transactions outside of Europe.

In order to use the cashback to cover your Revolut Metal monthly subscription, you would need to spend at least £971 per month outside of Europe.

For most users, this isn’t feasible and I made only around £40 cashback since I joined the Revolut Metal plan. It helps to cover for some of the fees, however, I feel like this shouldn’t really by the metric to compare.

The cashback you will receive with the Revolut Metal card is simply a nice add-on but not a comparison criterion.

Revolut Metal Insurance Review

Many users consider ordering the Revolut Metal card for its insurance. Let me tell you this. If you are an occasional traveler with short trips under 40 days, Revolut offers very basic travel insurance that might lower the cost during emergencies.

Note, that you should cover all your expenses for your trip with the Revolut Metal card to claim the insurance refund in case things go sidewards. Also if you choose to submit an insurance claim, you will have to pay £75 access.