What about 1.75% UBS fee for paying in CHF to abroad? Or do they bill it at the end of month?

And the catch being that when one uses SEPA the bank converts CHF to EUR at the bank's rate, not the official rate, which may mean a 1%-ish loss, am I right?

Well, the UBS VPay card says there are fees for foreign payments of "1% of the amount,at least CHF 1.50,UBS foreign exchange sell rate" which means cca 2% loss. So not such a good option, at least for UBS.

Not if you transfer from a EUR denominated account.

How to get euros on it in the first place without getting totally ripped off by banks is a different question but not unsolvable

Good point about the new foreign transaction fees even if they are in the same currency... I am not 100% sure they apply to debit cards though, I thought it was only credit cards.

Anyway not sure what the big deal here is, as I said, I transferred money in CHF from CS account, and friend of mine from UBS account both without any charges, not from the originating bank nor from the receiving bank or intermediaries.

Can anyone else with CS or UBS account confirm this?

Looks like only people getting charged are people sending money with PF, where it costs CHF2.- from post finance and CHF8.- from intermediaries.

UBS charges their fee at the end of the month normally, don't celebrate too soon

No intermediary charges could be because UBS is Lloyd's intermediary itself

I'm pleased to report I wasn't charged at the end of the month. So for me, the UBS credit card top-up for CHF200 just "cost" CHF 2 which I am quite happy with.

I am guessing as it was a CHF top-up in CHF that it was not seen as a foreign transfer at all.

interesting that they don't treat it as a cash withdrawal as you could effectively withdraw that through Revolut.

Also interesting that the foreign transaction fee doesn't apply. The foreign transaction fee that was introduced to most credit cards around May this year which is 1.75% is supposed to be levied on e-commerce transactions where the company is based somewhere outside of Switzerland (e.g. Uber) and point of sale terminals charging in CHF effectively adding insult to injury as you get double penetrated first by the DCC and then by the Credit Card Issuer!

I personally prefer doing bank transfers even if I get charged the odd CHF5.-, if I transfer CHF2k it's effectively a 0.5% loading fee. No free banking in Switzerland so this is not something new.

Maybe if they introduce IBANs for Switzerland we could all just get paid directly into Revolut!

Hmmm, I made the top up on 18th May, maybe I got lucky with the timing and just missed the 1.75% levy imposed.

I think someone else posted that there are likely to be some changes in the market in this area. Transferwise and Revolut competing will help long term.

I think the introduction of a EURO IBAN might make it cheaper/easier for us to top in in CHF, but as you point out, the perfect scenario would be a Swiss IBAN, but I fear that might be some way off yet.

Ah, that it is possible. The earliest charge I have dates 27 of May. For the record, this shows in the credit card transactions, not in the main account fees at the end of the month

May I ask what UBS banking package you have? If you have something exotic it may have an influence on card charges as well. I have an UBS account with family banking package, I'll be ordering a Revolut card to try it out. Will let you know how it goes on.

I´m hoping for that to happen with "Transferwise borderless".

They announced it, so I hope it'll really happen

Revolut will be adding three cryptocurrencies to their offering in the near future.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKBN19W2U0

Well my personal/consumer Transferwise account now has a "free to activate" Euro IBAN so I am now completely confused :confused.

Revolut also now has a "consumer" account EUR IBAN available for me to activate:

In short....
1. Salary paid in CHF into UBS "CHF Personal Account"
2. Regularly monthly outgoings in EUR (approx €800)
3. Regular trips overseas inc. to EUR zone and UK

At the moment I am using Transferwise to send any 'spare' CHF to a UK bank account. That same UK GBP account is then used to top up Revolut with no charges as it's a UK IBAN topped up from a UK account.
That money is then exchanged via Revolut into EUR for the regular EUR payments.

I have toyed with:
1. UBS CHF transfer to Transferwise, then Transferwise pays out EUR to the regular recipient
2. UBS CHF to Revolut, but this has a higher cost (1% or CHF25 approx)

Does anyone know if having a EUR IBAN would make it cheaper to pay into from CHF or it is just the same as GBP and seen as completely overseas transfer.

More and more options mean more consumer choice...but more confusion too

OK, so I transfered CHF from UBS MasterCard to Revolut this week and I was slapped with the UBS 1.75% "surcharge abroad" on top of the Revolut 1% fee. This means a total loss of 2.75% which is not that appealing. It's still a gain compared to what UBS would charge when directly paying Euros using their MasterCard (>3%), but a very small one and not worth the effort IMHO.

Otherwise to load Revolut from UBS, SWIFT CHF transfers (5 CHF charge) remains a better option - particularly on large amounts. For smaller amounts, SEPA transfers from CHF to EUR to Revolut get a 1.5%-ish loss with 0.30 CHF per transfer.

Again, this is for UBS - not sure if better can be obtained via other banks. Is it possible to do a transfer using PostFinance without having an account with them?

I think with a EUR IBAN you can do a SEPA transfer directly in EUR (means UBS converts CHF to EUR and then sends them). This gives a roughly 1.5% loss (UBS's own CHF->EUR rate + 0.30CHF per transfer)

Or you can transfer CHF directly to the receiving account and then it's a SWIFT transfer at 5CHF a pop. And then if the EUR IBAN is not with Revolut you get CHF converted to EUR at the receiving bank's rate, or it might be more expensive

You can check all the options with the UBS online banking transfer tool - you have several choices and you get the different costs before commiting the transfer.

Just open a EUR account at your bank and you can transfer euros from it to (almost) everywhere for free with no conversion loss

*almost everywhere: Switzerland is a bit of a special case in SEPA and some rare receiving banks slap extra charges on transfers from it but not from EU countries

Yes, but in the case of UBS an EUR account costs at least 5 CHF/month. Plus, you have to convert CHF into EUR at an efficient rate which is not that easy either.

Revolut just introduced individual EUR-accounts. Account numbers are from Lithuania, 20 digits long and starting with LT.

As Lithuania is an EUR-country, it seems they want to really introduce local account numbers for their base-currencies.

Now if they'd manage to pull this stunt for CHF Revolut would be the card for Switzerland!

Interestingly the IBAN starts IBAN LT56 39xxxxxx for Lithuania, but the BIC code starts BIC REVOGBxxx

Not sure if that means ultimately Revolut base if GB or if that is a coincidence for my account 😎

BIC codes are individual for each institution.

REVOGB21XXX is for Revolut.

More info (for example) here:
https://www.swiftcodes.info/united-k...code-revogb21/

Not sure if that means that Revolut has a banking license now? I would've expected a random BIC from antother bank, just as with their ongoing relationship with Lloyds regarding other currencies.

I am a bit confused with Revolut CHF charges. I have Postfinance and tried to top-up twice:

1) First time, I sent 100 CHF, I get charged 2 CHF on PF, and then 100 CHF get into my revolut CHF account.
2) Second time, I send > 300 CHF. 6 francs less arrive on my Revolut account (plus the other two which I guess will be charged at the end of the month).

Both times with shared costs, both times originating from the same account in PF. What is going on? They do not have a consistent pricing policy?

I tried to ask the live agent, they are obviously going to answer tomorrow...