Changes With Wise Cards And Why I Opened A Revolut Account

[RSD1]

A while ago, I noticed a feature on my Wise cards that others didn’t seem to have. Called "Spending," it appears in my card settings for every Wise card in my account. This feature lets me select specific currency balances and Jars for each card to spend from and disable some if I want to. However, I recently learned that I was part of a test group, which explains why some users didn’t have access to it. Unfortunately, Wise has now decided to actually discontinue this feature starting in April.

 

Below is the message I received from them today:
 

Quote

 

From 14 April, you’ll no longer be able to link your card to a specific balance or Jar.

 

For the past few months, you’ve been using a feature that allowed you to link your Wise card to:

 

• a specific balance so that you only spend that currency

 

• a specific Jar so that you could spend directly from it

 

This was a feature we were testing and we’ll now be taking it offline so that we can focus on building an improved version. This means any Wise cards you have will be linked to all of your balances, and you’ll no longer be able to spend from a Jar.

 

Thanks,

 

The Wise team

 

 

In addition to the change mentioned above, I’ve been reading more reports online of Wise accounts being shut down for seemingly arbitrary reasons. While these cases are anecdotal since I don’t know all the specifics, it still makes me feel like I may not always be on steady ground with Wise, especially since I rely on my Wise account for part of my daily spending and some monthly transfers.

 

Because of this, I decided to open a Revolut account last week as a backup. I regularly deal with quite a few different currencies through Wise, and while it has been a cost-effective and convenient tool in many ways, losing access to all these currencies, especially while traveling, would be a major inconvenience.

 

To mitigate the risks with Wise, I now have Revolut as a backup spending option if I need it while traveling. It offers similar features and currency exchange rates to Wise, though its bank transfer fees can be significantly higher. So before any trip, I plan to link my Revolut account to one of my real bank debit cards so that I can quickly add funds to the Revolut account for instant spending if needed. While I don’t intend to use it as my daily driver like I do with Wise, having an alternative gives me peace of mind in case something unexpectedly prevents me from accessing or spending my funds through Wise at any time.

 

Has anyone else using Wise set up a Revolut account as well? Do you use both, or have you switched to mainly just one?

[scubascuba3]

I had a Revolut card years ago, when i found out about their hidden charges in the weekend exchange rate i closed the account. No plans to reopen yet

[RSD1]

1 hour ago, scubascuba3 said:

I had a Revolut card years ago, when i found out about their hidden charges in the weekend exchange rate i closed the account. No plans to reopen yet

Yes, I'm familiar with the weekend charge issue with Revolut, but they do it to hedge any exchange rate fluctuations that might occur during the weekend when currency exchange markets are closed.
 

You've got two options with that though. You either exchange large chunks in advance, so you're not dealing with the weekends or, if you prefer to do it little by little, then just exchange on a Friday enough for the weekend. Anyway, not a big issue overall. 

For now it's just a back up for me too. I'm still good with Wise. But sometimes things can change unexpectedly and I think it's good to have a similar alternative to jump

to quickly if needed. 

[scubascuba3]

5 hours ago, RSD1 said:

Yes, I'm familiar with the weekend charge issue with Revolut, but they do it to hedge any exchange rate fluctuations that might occur during the weekend when currency exchange markets are closed.

Yeah i know but at the time it was buried in the small print, no one knew