Revolut Invest Review | 2024 | Sumlad (2024)

To set up a stock trading account on Revolut, download the Revolut app or create an account online. Once you’re logged in, go to the Invest tab. Fill in any required details and your Revolut Trading account should be set up within two days.

You should be eligible for a Revolut stock trading account once you meet the following criteria:

1. Provide proof that you are at least 18 years old (upload ID)
2. Give your PPS Number or other relevant tax identification number details
3. Have the latest version of the Revolut app downloaded

Adding money to trade and invest in stocks on Revolut can be done in seconds. Here’s the process:

Up until recently, Revolut Invest accounts were only in USD but with the arrival of Irish and European-domiciled ETFs that are quoted in Euros, you can now deposit Euros straight away without currency conversion costs.

Click ‘Withdraw’ to move money from the Invest account to your main account. If your money is in USD, you can easily convert it by doing the following:

From there, you can keep your money in Revolut or move it to a different account.

On Revolut, you can buy stocks from the following US stock exchanges, as below:

• New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (Nasdaq)
• Over-the-counter (OTC) markets

You can also buy Irish-domiciled ETFs.

Revolut is currently rolling out a Savings account for users that pays between 3.51% and 3.96% interest. Money held in these accounts are invested in Money Market Funds (MMFs) with Fidelity and 41% tax is deducted at source.

MMFs are a type of low-risk investment product that places money in deposit accounts in banks or invests in high-quality government and corporate bonds. Fidelity’s MMF via Revolut is AAA-rated by Moody’s and S&P Global.

Stock trading for Revolut investment accounts is limited to U.S.-listed shares. As well as U.S. stocks, you can buy American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the OTC markets.

An ADR is a certificate of ownership issued by a US bank that allows investors to invest in non-US stocks. All ADRs are priced in USD.

ADRs are how investors using Revolut are able to trade stocks of Irish, European, and Asian companies like Ryanair (RYAAY), ASML (ASML), and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM).

Revolut doesn’t require you to invest in a full share or whole shares. For example, you can buy 0.50 shares or 1.75 shares of a stock. You can buy fractional shares for as little as $1 which can be useful for beginners.

Fractional share investing lets you buy shares that aren’t rounded to a whole number. This could be less than one unit of stock (like 0.10 shares), or an amount that just isn’t rounded (like 5.75 shares).

There are four commodities available to trade on Revolut:

1. Gold
2. Silver
3. Palladium
4. Platinum

Commodities can be sent to other Revolut users but cannot be used to pay for anything. You will at no point receive physical precious metals in exchange for your purchases.

Investing in commodities simply mirrors price performance. Unlike stocks, commodities have no investor protection if Revolut goes bust.

Revolut is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide cryptocurrency services. On the Revolut app, there are over 100 crypto tokens that you can trade or invest in.

Of the 100 or so cryptocurrencies available to trade, four are available for staking as well. The crypto tokens you can stake on Revolut and their expected returns are as follows:

Crypto staking is an interest-earning process available for some assets using the proof-of-stake mechanism. Essentially, your crypto assets are used as collateral to ensure that the security of the network isn’t breached. For doing that, you get a reward or yield (kind of like a dividend).

However, whether you’re investing, trading, or staking a cryptocurrency you don’t ever actually own the crypto itself. In Revolut’s words:

For those of you who just want to speculate on price, it shouldn’t be a problem. But anyone who cares about true ownership may want to opt for a crypto exchange and use a self-custody crypto wallet to control it themselves.

Again, there is no investor protection scheme or compensation if Revolut or its partnered exchanges (Coinbase and Bitstamp) were to go bankrupt.

Revolut customers are now also able to move crypto assets to an external wallet using Revolut Ramp. Fees apply.

Every Revolut customer gets at least one free trade per month. Depending on your subscription plan, you may qualify for more free trades, however. The table below illustrates how many free trades you are eligible for according to the Revolut plan you currently have.

The table below compiles how much you would pay if you wanted to invest $100, $1,000, or $10,000 with Revolut. In each case, it involves a 0.25% fee ($/€1 minimum). The fees below do not include regulatory and currency conversion charges.

Aside from the free trades, there are commissions for additional trades, along with other fees. Here are the Revolut fees you need to be aware of for buying or selling shares or ETFs:

• Minimum commission of €1 or 0.25% of the trade, whichever value is greater
• Custody fee of 0.12%, payable every year on your entire stock portfolio balance
• Regulatory fees on sales of shares listed on US exchanges
• Currency conversion fees

The currency conversion fees are exempt on the first €1,000. After this point, the rate you pay will depend on your subscription tier.

• Standard plans: 1.00%
• Plus plans: 0.50%
• Premium: 0.00%
• Metal: 0.00%
• Ultra: 0.00%

If you’re unsure about your investing fees, Revolut will provide you with a ‘Costs & Charges Report’ annually. To access these reports, follow these steps:

1. Go to the ‘Invest’ tab
2. Click the three dots where it says ‘More’
3. Choose ‘Documents’
4. All of the details for charges on your Invest account will be downloadable

Revolut provides a simple course for beginners investing in stocks. It has two parts:

1. Stock basics
2. How to invest in stocks

It also provides definitions for common terms investors should know, and Revolut is currently working on building a blog to provide more educational material for stocks.

Revolut has line charts and candlestick charts. It will mark the point at which you buy and sell shares.

It provides charting on a 1-day, 1-week, 1-month, 6-month, 1-year, 5-year, and all-time timeframe. It does not provide charting for smaller intervals such as 15 minutes or 1 hour.

Both types of charts are powered by Polygon.io.

There are two main Revolut stock lists:

• Today’s Top Movers (the stocks with the biggest price moves up and down)
• Popular stocks (the stocks that are being traded the most by Revolut users)

The stock screener for shares on Revolut helps you find stocks that align with your investment strategy. It will let you filter companies based on five sets of criteria:

1. Industry or sector
2. Size (market capitalization)
3. Price-to-earnings ratio (valuation multiple)
4. Dividend yield
5. Stock price changes

Independent price estimates are available for Revolut Invest. Data compiled by Refinitiv will show you price targets from all of the analysts covering the stock.

MorningStar also works with Revolut to provide fair-value price estimates and risk ratings. This can help with your own research to see if professional analysts view a particular stock as overvalued or undervalued.

Revolut analytics provides you with a complete overview of your monetary gain and the calculated percentage return you have achieved since opening your Invest account.

If you select the analytics button, you can see every stock you’ve ever bought, sold, or owned on Revolut. It will break down the return from each trade and show you how much exposure your stock portfolio has to each sector.

Revolut records account statements for all of your transactions over a specified period. You simply go to the “Invest” tab and select the three dots under your balance.

You can get a list of all historical transactions and a profit and loss statement for your account over a period of time. This is useful when you need to file capital gains tax or income from dividends at the end of the year.

Revolut Securities Europe UAB, which manages stock trading accounts, is regulated by the Bank of Lithuania (BoL) as a financial brokerage firm. All investment account assets are safeguarded by a third-party firm and held separately from other assets such as cash deposit accounts (current accounts).

If we look at Revolut as a whole, the company has more than 40 regulatory licenses now including:

• A full European Banking License granted by the ECB
• Registered as a Crypto Asset Service Provider with CySEC
• Full registration as a crypto asset firm with the FCA
• A broker-dealer license granted in the US
• An Australian Financial Services License
• An Australian Credit License granted by ASIC

Other regulatory requests have been submitted too, including an application for a US banking license.

Regulatory approval is quite a major milestone for the company as Revolut Trading Ltd, the previous entity that facilitated share trading, was not regulated in the UK or the EU. Instead, Revolut Trading Ltd worked with a specialist firm, Resolution Compliance Ltd.

Resolution Compliance Ltd was a completely separate company that is not owned by Revolut and is regulated by the FCA in the UK. Revolut Trading Ltd is an appointed representative of Resolution Compliance, which means Revolut carries out regulated FCA activities with the support and supervision of Resolution Compliance Ltd.

Companies choose to become appointed representatives for a couple of reasons:

1. It can speed up their go-to-market strategy
2. Getting full FCA approval can prove to be difficult and time-consuming
3. It improves a firm’s compliance track record

Revolut Trading Ltd was on the FCA’s temporary registration list, which would make sense as to why they had opted for the appointed representative route. Whether they will continue to seek regulatory approval from the FCA in the UK now is unknown.

As of June 2023, Revolut stock trading accounts now have EU investor protection, up to €22,000. Investment accounts on Revolut are regulated by the Bank of Lithuania (BoL) as a financial brokerage firm with an investor compensation scheme.

Remember, Revolut’s Investor Compensation Scheme applies to the ownership of stocks, it does not apply to commodities or crypto.

Please note the information here relates to Revolut Securities Europe UAB. Revolut cash account products are provided by Revolut Bank UAB and Revolut Insurance Europe UAB. Cash accounts on Revolut have additional deposit insurance up to €100,000 per person (where its European banking license applies).

Revolut is the UK’s most valuable fintech startup, having raised $800 million worth of funding from SoftBank and Tiger Global in its last round in 2021 when Revolut was valued at $33 billion. CEO, Nikolay Storonsky went on record in June 2022 stating that the company still had enough funding for two more years. Even if Revolut maintains a grow-at-all-costs approach, it can still raise funds through an IPO which some analysts have forecast to take place in 2024. Revolut has reportedly been profitable since 2021.

Positives

Looking at business performance, there are positives. Revolut now boasts 30 million retail clients and more than 500,000 business accounts — it has added that it is onboarding 2,000 new business accounts every week as well. None of this growth appears to be slowing either.

Negatives

Revolut has been criticised over its accounting practices and balance sheet concerns as recently as March 2023. Financial auditor, BDO, was unable to account for €477 million of Revolut’s revenue, nearly two-thirds of total revenue. Both Revolut, and BDO came under fire for the major accounting error.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it deemed just 42% of BDO’s audits to be of an acceptable standard in the 12 most recent cases it examined. Alongside this criticism, UK City Regulators, the FCA, and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are said to be reconsidering the granting of a UK banking license to Revolut as a result of these missteps.

It’s quite unlikely for Revolut to go under, but it’s important to err on the side of caution. Holding assets that are covered under the investor protection scheme (i.e. up to €22,000) is the best route.

Investment account money is kept in a segregated account with Revolut’s unnamed third-party broker. In terms of your investments with Revolut, the company had this to say:

While at first glance Revolut falls short on customer service options, the live chat support option is hyper-efficient. If you don’t get an answer to your question through an automated response, you’ll be put in touch with a live agent who will be able to help you.

The wait time is typically quite short, and standard queries should be solved in less than 10 minutes. If you want to speak with an agent on Revolut live chat, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Revolut app and click on the profile icon in the top left corner
2. Select ‘Help’
3. Scroll down to the bottom where it says ‘Requests’ and click on ‘New Chat’
4. Enter what Revolut product you need help with
5. A chatbot will appear on the screen
6. Ask one of the randomly selected questions, it doesn’t matter which
7. Under the chatbot’s answer, select “I need more help”
8. Choose “Chat with a live agent”
9. That’s it. A real human is being on the other end that can help you

Yes, you can buy ETFs on Revolut. Since May 2023, the financial app added more than 100 ETFs that users can invest in.

You can also buy fractional shares of an ETF — the same as its stock selection.

Yes. Investors must pay tax on dividends, ETFs, or sales of shares for a gain. Tax rates will vary depending on the country you are resident in.

If you’re based in Ireland, you have to follow investment tax rules in Ireland for example. You can use this CGT calculator as a starting point.

It’s also worthwhile to look up what tax treaties your country may or may not have with the US as this will affect how much tax you owe for trading US securities.