Revolut launches free payments feature for businesses

Revolut is rolling out its instant and free payments system for Irish businesses to better facilitate cross-border payments, the fintech said on Tuesday.

“RevTags,” a product already available to consumers, can now be used by firms to transfer money to other businesses without having to enter an Iban (international bank account number) or other account details.

The company said the feature is available free of charge and will allow Irish businesses to pay employees and contractors in 150 countries around the world. Revolut is also rolling out payout links, enabling payments to customers and suppliers through a URL link.

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It comes after a survey conducted by the digital challenger bank revealed that almost two-thirds of Irish businesses believe the facilitation of cross-border payments to be the biggest financial challenge they are facing.

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Just 9 per cent of the 100 business surveyed said they were able to make instant payments to jurisdictions with close to two thirds indicating that payments typically take more than 12 hours to process.

Firms also reported hidden charges with two-fifths of respondents indicating they faced fees of 3 per cent or more on cross-border payments. One in 10, meanwhile, said charges can be 6 per cent or higher.

“Extending the availability of this feature to Revolut Business customers, paired with the launch of payout links, marks a significant milestone in our mission to make cross-border payments fee-free, instant, and seamless for businesses operating globally,” said James Gibson, managing director of Revolut Business in a statement.

Corporate customers

The fintech has been in expansion mode recently in Ireland, signing up 5,000 businesses in the first quarter of the year, according to figures released in May, up 50 per cent from the same period last year.

Revolut has rolled out Irish Ibans for Irish corporate customers. Until recently, the digital bank’s customers had to use Revolut’s Lithuanian Ibans, which had sometimes led to what the company calls “Iban discrimination” from third parties.

Revolut was publicly valued at $33 billion (€30.2 billion) in 2021 after SoftBank and Tiger Global Management led an investment round, but its value is likely to have deflated substantially since then in line with the wider tech sector.

In its annual report published in June, Dublin-based Molten Ventures, which holds a 5 per cent stake in the digital bank, downgraded the value of its stake in Revolut by about 40 per cent at the end of March 2022.