- Aim to “break the inertia” and instigate effortless savings
- Vaults feature offers roundups and spare change reserves
- 2018 has been a busy year for Revolut so far
International money transfers startup Revolut is continuing its dizzying rollout of new products with its new Vaults tool, a nifty little feature that lets customers round up and save spare change from their everyday purchases.
The old English adage, “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves” gets a digital makeover with the Vaults feature.
People are now using the cryptocurrency payments upstart to make 15 million transactions (and climbing) every month. The new feature will let them save any change from these transactions in any of the 25 currencies the Revolut platform supports, as well as Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin cryptocurrencies.
The London-headquartered challenger bank is aiming to “break the inertia” among Brit consumers, of whom many seem averse to developing the habit of saving.
Revolut CEO and Founder Nikolay Storonsky announced the new feature with the following statement: “Offering spare change savings and roundups to Revolut users has been one of our most popular feature requests.
“We’ve had thousands of people in our community asking for this feature, so we wanted to give something back and ask for their help in naming it. We believe that Vaults will enable us to help many more people start saving and investing towards their future.”
Customers can add regular payments or one-offs to Vaults any time they wish and are able to adjust the settings of the feature to their preferences easily from the Revolut app. They can also withdraw any money they’ve accrued in Vaults at any point, and the transfer will be instantaneous.
New Revolut customers can open an app-based account with the digital bank within 60 seconds. They’ll also receive instantaneous analytics, be able to hold and exchange 25 currencies at real exchange rates and make international money transfers free of charge.
Vaults is the latest of a flurry of innovative initiatives Revolut has launched in 2018 alone in its near-hyperactive efforts to stand out from traditional banks. Earlier this month, it launched fraud-busting Disposable Virtual Cards which self-destruct after each transaction and regenerate new card details for the next transaction. This renders them virtually impossible to hack: even if a hacker were to obtain the card details, it would be of no use to them as the card will have expired as soon as the true customer makes a purchase.
In January, it launched Pay-per-Day Travel Insurance, which ingeniously uses geolocation tech to switch on cover (starting at just £1 a day) only when a customer is abroad. Customers can add family and friends while they’re out and about on their travels, and for the more adventurous among them, they can add winter sports cover at the tap of a button.
In the same month, Revolut announced that it has put in place 24-hour support for all customers, no matter what time zone or location they are in.
By February, it had added Price Alerts to its repertoire of offerings, allowing customers to get the best rates ahead of a forthcoming holiday or receive a notification when their favourite cryptocurrency dipped.
And at some point in 2018, Revolut expects to enter the North American market.
It seems that this is one cross-border transfers innovator that’ll never be content to sit on its haunches.
