‘As a payment mechanism, it’s great’

CONSUMER advocate Brendan Burgess has hounded errant Irish banks for years.

But his assessment of Revolut is surprisingly enthusiastic. ‘It’s absolutely fantastic as a payment mechanism,’ the Askaboutmoney.com founder said.

To demonstrate, he transferred money he owed to someone in the USA on the spot.

‘While I was talking to you, I just sent $280. In US dollars, with no fees or charges.’

Brendan’s hobby is backgammon and at a break in an international tournament a while back he went for a bite to eat with another player. ‘The bill was €25. But how were we going to split it?’ he said.

Brendan paid the bill and his new mate zapped him €12.50 via Revolut. ‘It was instant with no hassle, delay or messing.’

You could send someone money with any banking app. But it would involve filling in their IBAN or else setting them up as a preferred payee, not something you would want to do with a waiter, or backgammon opponent, waiting impatiently.

So I took Brendan’s advice and downloaded the Revolut app.

But how can I put money in? You can electronically transfer money from another account – or have wages or invoices paid to it.

But, I’m not prepared to trust Revolut as my main bank just yet, and filling in long IBAN numbers takes the fun out of this smartphone banking lark. So I used Apple Pay, which I also had to set up, but, again, it was done in a jiffy.

For the craic, I sent Brendan €1 which went through immediately and he sent back a GIF (an animated image – and you can do this with Revolut) of a guy throwing wads of cash around.

So far, all good fun. But would Brendan transfer his main banking account and life savings to Revolut?

Not on your life. He hasn’t gone that soft. ‘I would put a couple of hundred in it. Maybe more if you are going on holidays,’ he said.

Nice to see that even in this fast-changing, digitally-disrupted world some things never change.