Cryptocurrency users now have access to exclusive benefits and a shiny new way to make real-world purchases. Starting today, Revolut’s heavy-duty, solid metal card is available, and it literally pays you to spend cryptocurrency.
Revolut is a banking alternative that offers all the services of a regular bank, only digitally through its app. It’s grown to include trading and investment support, as well as quick, easy foreign exchange. Five cryptocurrencies are currently supported, alongside dozens of international fiat currencies.
Customers can already get themselves prepaid cards that enable purchases with cryptocurrency, but from today they can pay extra for the privilege, style, and class that comes with solid black metal.
Check out how Revolut describes it, don’t you just love marketing-speak?
The new metal card is fully contactless and has been designed with obsessive attention to detail. At three times the weight of a regular card, Revolut Metal is crafted from a single sheet of reinforced steel using a diamond drill bit. Paint particles have then been layered to the card using a physical vapour deposition, with customers’ details etched onto the card using a high precision laser.
Standard Revolut prepaid cards are essentially free, but don’t come with many benefits. For over a year, a monthly subscription fee of £6.99 ($8) has been charged to access Premium level perks, such as unlimited foreign exchange, free international money transfers and ATM withdrawals – even access to travel insurance. Now, there is a level above Premium: Metal.
Revolut Metal subscribers will get some extras. Besides the heavy metal card, they will receive a dedicated concierge service to facilitate purchases for things like travelling and festivals. So, Metal-tier customers won’t have to book their own tickets for things, they can just have someone else to do it.
What’s more, the new metal card gives cashback every time it’s used. Purchases made outside of Europe will receive one percent cashback, which can either paid in cryptocurrency or fiat. Purchase made inside Europe, though, attract just one-tenth of that.
When quizzed about how Revolut protect customer cryptocurrency ‘loaded’ onto its debit card, it remained tight-lipped. A spokesperson declared that all customer cryptocurrency is kept offline, in “cold storage.”
Even when pressed for further details, Revolut told us that it is “super tight on security in relation to cryptocurrency, so [it does] not give out any information.” Well played.
Customers looking to sign up for Revolut Metal will either pay £120 ($140) per year, or £12.99 ($15) monthly. That includes the new card and concierge services and free travel insurance, on top of the benefits currently enjoyed by Premium subscribers. Revolut has confirmed that its Premium service will continue unchanged.
If using this explicitly for cryptocurrency, as long as you spend more than £4,000 ($4,600) worth of it a year, outside Europe, I guess Revolut Metal pays for itself. If you just use cryptocurrency in Europe, though, you’ll have to spend way more.
“We see Revolut Metal as an essential lifestyle product for people of all ages and incomes, ranging from digital nomads to everyday working professionals,” Revolut told Hard Fork. ‘“We are absolutely convinced that Revolut Metal will be the exclusive card of the future, and an absolute must for travellers worldwide.”
Super cool, maybe. Essential, eh, debatable. Anyway, if you want one, now you can get one.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.