How do exchange rates work?
We strongly recommend you always choose to pay and withdraw money in the local currency when abroad. Not taking this route can cost you more for two reasons:
- Some merchants and ATMs will charge you in your base currency and apply their own foreign exchange fees on top, technically exchanging the funds twice and costing you more – first within Revolut in your base currency, and again at the ATM on that country's local currency
- When ATM providers recognise you're using a card from a foreign country, they use this opportunity to apply their own exchange rate to make a profit on each transaction
At Revolut Business, we give customers our interbank rate for money currency exchanges – the same rate we'd offer banking partners for inter-bank transactions. We determine the rate based on market conditions like liquidity and volatility, and it might be different from averages published by other sources.