Revolut, a digital banking start-up, has launched its acquiring solution as part of its business starter pack. This product will allow businesses in 13 European countries to accept card payments from their customers. This move into payment processing means that Revolut can now compete against companies like Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, and Checkout.com. Revolut, founded five years ago in London, is valued at $5.5 billion based on its latest funding round.
With Revolut’s business accounts, users can process international transactions in their preferred currencies. Revolut supports 14 currencies and payments are remitted into the business account the following day. Users can also request debit cards, allowing them to make transactions directly from their Revolut account.
Business customers on their paid plans will receive a small allowance for free U.K. and EEA card payment processing with no additional charge. Once that limit is exceeded, users pay 1.3% on card payments from their customers in the U.K. and Europe. For other cards, the fee is 2.8% on every transaction, without free allowance.
The transaction charges are slightly lower, compared to companies like Stripe, which have had many years to develop their payment platforms, with more optimization and support for more currencies and payment methods, as well as sophisticated protection against fraud.
For those with business accounts, Revolut provides easy-to-use plugins for WooCommerce, Magento, and Prestashop. Alternatively, businesses can use the Merchant API and a customizable widget to create a personalized experience on their websites.
Freelancers who only need to generate a couple of invoices every month can use Revolut to create payment links. Their clients get redirected to a webpage hosted by Revolut to make the payment.
What makes the acquiring solution from Revolut better is its integration with Revolut Business. Users can view payments and banking from the same dashboard unlike Stripe where they have to switch between their stripe account and bank account to manage transaction data.
This is extremely powerful, especially for B2B businesses that do not deal with large quantities of transactions and do not want different platforms for payments. It remains to be seen just how customers will react to, and use, the new feature. With the online payments market seeing incredible growth, this move into business payments very well may boost Revolut’s profits in the near future.
