It should be on bank statements and on the card. What I was trying to say though was that the fact that Barclays has a system like Revolut is a problem for other banks that don't have a system like that. So our solution is still valuable for them.
The idea of using Barclays, or any 3rd party bank, is just to get enough traction so they have their own participation method later. Also it doesn't show Barclays on the statement from my usage - it shows the end merchants details. I didn't really know it was Barclays till now.
Barclays has been known to help startups by lending them their (global) infrastructure in the UK. Another Example is Dopay where Egyptian Barclays ATMs have been lent out.
The Bank of England is moving towards allowing non banks to participate in the payments system by 2020, its supposedly blockchain secured so it goes a notch above what a sole bank/firm could do. Revolut could theoretically switch from Barclays then.
You can think of revolut as a front end for barclays client pool account. This is a very simplistic explanation but what I'm trying to emphasize here is that the money revolut manages is effectively with Barclays.
So the idea of having Barclays is not to get traction or to have their own participation method later but to have the muscle of a bank that can handle large scale international payments.
There are other big banks who don't have something like revolut. So our solution can be a good proposition for them (Not saying that we don't have ideas for any new features. We do, but we've been caught off guard by the new announcement. It'll take a few more days to make it's way to the pitch)
>"Barclays has been known to help startups by lending them their (global) infrastructure in the UK"
Yes, but why? Barclays profits with every customer that revolut brings/ will bring. Other banks would want to profit in a similar way.
I didn't know about BOE but I don't think that switching banking partners after about 5 years of operation is going to be that easy... Not sure could be wrong.
> Yes, but why? Barclays profits with every customer that revolut brings/ will bring. Other banks would want to profit in a similar way.
Actually they hope the startup does well so they can buy them later. Revolut's cost of acquiring a user is far less than Barclays (<£10 vs £300+).
Barclay's deal isn't free, they take equity in exchange for letting startups using their infrastructure, it's not that expensive considering what they give though.
I think I know what you're getting at, at replacing the Correspondent bank system. There's another one, Transferwise, that seems to be getting transaction where Banks in other countries use it internally to avoid correspondent banks (transferwise often matches transfers to avoid transfers).
The BoE's 2020 system isn't for an ordinary firm to replace a banking partner. It's to join the payment network and have an account backed by the BoE/blockchain without it being at a designated high street bank. It wont be easy to use I guess, but it would be compelling enough for a Fintech company to use it.
I can see alot of value with the service you're describing, I don't think the level of value would be high out of countries which have high legislative requirements/forex controls. I had a similar idea a few years ago and my base assumptions were incorrect regarding people's needs for my service.
They use Barclays as their backend but is anything of that visible to their customers?