Neobank Revolut plans to install its own ATMs with facial recognition and card issuance

As part of its plans for 2025, Neobank Revolut has announced the installation of its own ATMs, starting with Spain. These will not only provide customers with money, but will also function as card-issuing systems. This means that anyone who does not yet have a payment card will be able to get it directly from the machine in future. The bank has not yet revealed what this will look like in detail, but Revolut plans to equip the machines with facial recognition and an identity check, which will presumably also rely on facial recognition to ensure that the right person is standing in front of the machine.

In the long term, Revolut also plans to make possible the depositing of cash at the ATMs. This is still somewhat cumbersome at Neobank, as the bank primarily relies on digital transfers to the Revolut account or the collection of money via Apple Pay, for example. 

Revolut also hopes to focus on merchants by offering innovations in the form of credit functions such as pay later or "Revolut Kiosk". Revolut also intends to offer real estate loans, but initially only in Lithuania, followed by Ireland and France. 

Dynamic currency conversion: Revolut protects customers

Those who pay frequently by card outside the eurozone may have already noticed that many card terminals in stores offer payment in euros, even if the traveler is outside the eurozone. What looks like a nice service at first glance can, however, mean enormous costs for the customer. Revolut is now taking a stand against this customer-unfriendly approach, as Marc-Oliver Schaake from nocash.blog berichtet reports.

According to Schaake, the service, called dynamic currency conversion (DCC), involves a surcharge of up to 8%. The card-issuing institutions do not necessarily like this. The same applies to the companies behind the card schemes. Mastercard has even banned DCC below the NoCVM limit, which is the limit set for contactless payments without PIN entry.

According to Schaake, DCC is no longer permitted at Revolut, whose cards can be used particularly well in foreign currency areas from Monday to Friday, thus protecting its customers from unnecessary costs when traveling. Neobank does charge fees at weekends, but these are considerably lower than DCC.

Incidentally, the rules for DCC do not apply at ATMs, as Schaake further explains. Users who select DCC there may even incur additional costs of up to 11% just so that a euro amount is shown directly on the card statement. This is only worthwhile in very rare cases.