>>Like most of the banks, right?

Yes and no. "Predatory" can mean different things.

Most banks are super-cautious, day-to-day. They can be predatory in certain way, taking advantage of customers with things like outrageous overdraft fees, exchange rates and such. They can be feckless, accumulating long-tail, systemic risk with Heads-I-Win-Tails-You-Lose games.^

The old banks are bad in lots of ways, but actually very safe in terms of big individual risk.

Revolut is feckless and/or predatory in a more startup-ey way. They'll "bet the house" on growth. They're also prone to the start-upy customer service "minimalism" math. Customer service is hard, expensive, and generally follows the pareto principle (80/20). IE, most customers don't need much support. Say 8% do. Those 8% are not profitable, and Revolut is willing to (even prefers to) lose them as customers. So, if something goes wrong... you could be in shit.

They also just plain takes risks, like. Last years, their CFO walked out suddenly in response to risk.

All this is not unlike Google and many other companies. I have had downright awful experiences with paypal. For a bank though, this is scary.

I use Revolut. The service is convenient for me, but I won't keep much money in it or be dependant on them for anything critical.

^ HIWTYL - Pronounced Hightail

>> They're also prone to the start-upy customer service "minimalism" math.

I have found their customer service to be very good. They respond within 2-3 minutes so I don't know what you could ask more. It's nothing like Paypal.

My experience is that if you need to get past the chatbot to talk to a real person, it takes an undisclosed amount of time (minutes, but could be easily towards 30minutes), and then if you're not immediately attentive when chat representative responds, you go back as being "out of contact", and need to restart. And it's not like the app gives you a notification or anything if the chat representative comes online.

I've never had to do something tricky like e.g. challenge a transaction with them, and I dread that perspective. What I read from people who had that problem is not encouraging.

When you have a real problem with some aspect of Revolut their chat agents are not empowered to actually fix anything, they just follow a script. If the UI won't allow it, they can't help, and they won't escalate. The only path is to get your solicitor to send them a letter.

With a real bank, you can walk into a branch and speak with the person at the counter. The IRL dynamics alone make it much more likely that your issue will be addressed. That said, I use "traditional" banks and fortunately have not had issues that couldn't be resolved on the phone.

Personally, I haven't had trouble, but I also haven't had problems to fix.

But, I know a lot of people that use Revolut. They're big here (ireland), because we often use multiple currencies.

Anyway, I've heard several first hand accounts of very bad C's on bigger issues, account lock-outs and such. It seems there is not an effective escalation.

There have also been media reports.

This is fine for a 2nd debit card account. I wouldn't use them for my current account.

No? There's a legal definition of predatory for most regulators that is a pretty clear line. The fact that they are regulated means that you have some ability to pursue your case / complaint outside of arbitration with the company.

Part of me wonders if part of this cash stash is for them to create a regulated institution of their own to start doing some more things in regulated markets - $850M is a lot of money!