RevPoints Arrive in the UK: What You Need to Know
Revolut brings RevPoints to the UK. Let's dive in 🤿
Revolut, the innovative financial technology company, is once again shaking up the market with the introduction of RevPoints to the UK. Revolut launched RevPoints in September 2023 to European markets like Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Greece and Malta. This exciting new rewards programme promises to offer users a plethora of benefits and make managing their finances even more rewarding. In this article, we’ll delve into what RevPoints are, how they work, and how they weigh up against other popular loyalty schemes we’ve discussed in past articles.
Introduction to RevPoints
RevPoints is Revolut’s new loyalty and rewards programme designed to offer customers a range of benefits for their everyday spending. The programme aims to gives users points which can be converted into other loyalty schemes like Avios and also be used to subsidise or redeem costs for accommodation and holiday experiences that Revolut offers through its app via its various partners.
Earning RevPoints
The number of points you earn depends on your Revolut plan. Here’s a breakdown:
Standard (free) - 1 RevPoint per £10 spent
Plus (£3.99 per month) – 1 RevPoint per £10 spent
Premium (£7.99 per month) – 1 RevPoint per £4 spent
Metal (£14.99 per month) – 1 RevPoint per £2 spent
Ultra (£45 per month) – 1 RevPoint per £1 spent
Revolut are also offering alternative ways to earn points beyond debit card spending. For example, you can also earn points by:
Round ups - you can use convert your spare change into RevPoints at boosted rates. For example £1 in spare change roundups can give you 50 RevPoints.
Challenges - Revolut are using gamification to earn points if you do things like use Apple Pay, donations, refer a friend and more. Expect these challenges to become quite creative and vary over time.
Book stays and experiences - if you book stays in-app you’ll receive 2x the number of points.
Using RevPoints
Revolut have 3 main ways that you can redeem your RevPoints. They’ve built them to be quite versatile similar to Amex in some ways.
Air Miles
You can convert your RevPoints to airline miles. For now, they support two airline loyalty schemes: Flying Blue (AirFrance, KLM, etc) and Avios (British Airways, Iberia, Vueling, Aer Lingus) covering up to 30 different airlines.
For every 1 RevPoint you can exchange it with 1 mile from the respective provider. The miles will be credited to your partner (Avios/Flying Blue) account. Then they can be used to book flight tickets.
Booking selected Revolut Stays properties
Here you can redeem points when booking stays from within the Revolut app. You’ll be able to choose a discount amount among the available options depending on your RevPoints balance. This option is available on certain books only at Revolut’s discretion.
Purchases with the Revolut Pay product
Revolut Pay is an online payment method available at the checkout of some Revolut Business customers. Here you can redeem those points for discount which depends on your RevPoints balance.
Essentially Revolut are looking to enable Revolut Business customers to accept points as an additional payment method to encourage the RevPoints to remain within the Revolut ecosystem.
⚠️ It’s worth noting that your RevPoints will expire after 3 years so you do need to redeem them or convert them into Avios to avoid any expiration deadlines.
Welcome incentives
New customers can significantly increase their points by earning 3,000 points, which can be converted into 3,000 air miles or up to £60 in travel discounts, after completing 150 eligible transactions.
Existing Revolut users have the opportunity to earn up to 10,000 bonus points by upgrading their plan and reaching specific spending thresholds within the first 90 days.
For those subscribed to Revolut’s Ultra plan, spending £2,500 per month could yield up to 30,000 RevPoints annually. According to Revolut, this amount is sufficient for a free round trip from London to New York or a £600 discount on hotel bookings.
How do RevPoints compare to other schemes like Amex, Barclaycard, Virgin etc?
Frankly, most of the other credit card schemes we’ve covered like Amex, Barclaycard, Virgin, Yonder and more offer better value.
The reason being firstly the pure points earning ratio - you will earn 1 point per £ spent in most cases and potentially more on paid Avios cards from Amex and Barclaycard with a rate of 1.5 points per £ spent.
Additionally, if you’re a new customer the welcome bonuses from Amex and Barclaycard are substantially more lucrative. For example, Amex are offering a limited time welcome bonus of 30,000 points (normally 20,000 points) until 16th July. While Barclaycard has a free Avios Mastercard which comes with a sign-up bonus for new customers of 5,000 Avios points if you spend £1,000 in the first three months.
Additionally because Revolut is a debit card it lacks the Section 75 protection afforded by credit cards so that extra protection you may rely on won’t be present.
Outro
Personally, I wouldn’t move to Revolut just for RevPoints but if you’re already embedded in the Revolut ecosystem with one of their paid plans then this is a welcome addition where you can earn points for your existing debit card spending. But I still believe it’s worth having another credit card for points earnings.
However, Revolut are a trailblazer in the UK finance scene and I look forward to seeing how RevPoints perform and how they iterate on it to make it more competitive and useful for their customers.
See you soon 👋
Interesting