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Revolut is the most-used neobank in Switzerland: 20.5% of the population uses it, the Standard plan costs CHF 0, and it changes up to CHF 1’250 a month into foreign currency at rates Swiss banks can’t touch. It isn’t a Swiss bank though: your money sits with a Lithuanian entity, and the Swiss IBAN isn’t in your name. On 16 September 2026 Revolut applied for a Swiss banking licence to fix exactly that.
The travel and foreign-currency app most Swiss wallets should hold, and the free plan is enough. It doesn’t replace a Swiss bank: the IBAN isn’t in your name and deposit protection is Lithuanian, not Swiss. Keep a Swiss account for Swiss life, and let Revolut handle everything abroad.
What is Revolut?
Revolut is a European neobank used by 20.5% of the Swiss population, which makes it the most-used banking app in the country. The Standard plan costs nothing and converts up to CHF 1’250 a month into foreign currency at rates Swiss banks cannot match.
It is not a Swiss bank. Your money sits with Revolut Bank UAB in Lithuania, insured to EUR 100’000 under the Lithuanian guarantee scheme rather than esisuisse, and the Swiss IBAN you are given is legally held in Revolut’s name rather than yours. Revolut applied for a Swiss banking licence on 16 September 2026.
Revolut pros and cons
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What Revolut actually costs
Revolut sells four plans in Switzerland, and the honest summary is that Standard does the job for most people. The paid tiers exist to remove the two limits that matter, the exchange cap and the ATM allowance, and to add insurance and lounge access. Every figure below comes from Revolut’s own Swiss fee pages, version in force since 15 July 2026.
The four plans
| Plan | Per month | Free exchange | Free ATM per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | CHF 0 | CHF 1’250 per month, weekdays | CHF 200 or 5 withdrawals |
| Premium | CHF 11.99 (or CHF 125 a year) | Unlimited, incl. weekends | CHF 400 |
| Metal | CHF 20.99 (or CHF 200 a year) | Unlimited, incl. weekends | CHF 800 |
| Ultra | CHF 65 (or CHF 650 a year) | Unlimited, incl. weekends | CHF 2’000 |
Source: Revolut’s Swiss paid plan terms and fee appendices, read 16 September 2026. Past every ATM allowance the fee is 2% of the withdrawal, minimum CHF 1. Note the paid plans lock you in: cancelling Premium or Metal within 10 months costs a break fee of two months’ subscription, and Ultra charges one extra month if you leave within 6.
Currency exchange, the reason the app exists
Paying in euros, dollars or baht with a Swiss debit or credit card typically costs 1.5% to 2.5% in hidden exchange markup. Revolut exchanges at its own rate, which tracks the interbank rate closely on weekdays, and adds no fee up to the monthly cap. On CHF 1’000 of holiday spending that’s roughly CHF 15 to CHF 25 kept in your pocket per trip, which is the entire pitch, and it works. The Swiss Payment Monitor 2/2026 says travel is now the top reason Swiss people use a neobank at all, and Revolut’s reach keeps climbing: 20.5% of the population, up from 18.9% half a year earlier.
The two Standard-plan traps. First, the cap: past CHF 1’250 of exchange in a rolling month, every additional exchange costs 1%. Second, the weekend: from Friday 17:00 to Sunday 18:00 New York time, all Standard-plan exchanges cost 1%, even under the cap, because markets are closed and Revolut prices in the risk. Exchange what you need on a weekday before you fly and both traps cost you nothing.
Everything else
| Item | Cost on Standard |
|---|---|
| Top-up by bank transfer or stored card | Free |
| CHF payments to Swiss accounts | Free |
| EUR transfers within SEPA | Free |
| Transfers to other Revolut users, worldwide | Free and instant |
| Other international transfers | Variable fee, shown in the app before you send |
| First physical card | Free, plus CHF 5.99 standard delivery |
| Virtual and disposable cards | Free |
Does Revolut give you a Swiss IBAN?
Since late 2024, every Swiss Revolut customer gets an individual CH-prefixed IBAN, provided through a partnership with PostFinance. That makes CHF top-ups a normal free domestic transfer, which used to be Revolut’s weakest point in Switzerland and is now solved.
The catch, decoded. The IBAN is individual to you but legally held in Revolut’s name, not yours. Some employers’ payroll systems and some billers verify that the account name matches the recipient, and those checks fail. In practice: transfers you make to your own Revolut account work fine, and salary payments sometimes don’t. Until the banking licence arrives, treat Revolut as a place you send money to, not the account your salary lands in.
The Swiss banking licence application
On 16 September 2026, Revolut announced it has applied to FINMA for a Swiss banking licence, with a stated plan to invest more than CHF 150 million in the Swiss market over five years. If granted, existing customers would move to a Swiss banking entity, and the promised list is exactly the current weak spots: Swiss IBANs from the outset, salary accounts, eBill, and access to the Swiss deposit guarantee scheme. Pillar 3a and TWINT are described as under consideration, not committed.
Temper the timeline. FINMA reviews take time, and Revolut’s own UK banking licence took over three years from application to approval. This page reviews the product you can open today; when the licence lands, the safety section below changes and this review changes with it.
Is my money safe at Revolut?
As a Swiss resident your account sits with Revolut Bank UAB, a Lithuanian bank licensed by the European Central Bank and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania. Deposits are insured up to EUR 100’000 per person under the Lithuanian deposit guarantee scheme. Revolut (Switzerland) AG is the FINMA-authorised Swiss representative of the banking and securities entities, and the debit cards themselves are issued by Revolut Switzerland Payments AG. What you don’t get is a FINMA banking licence or esisuisse cover, the protections behind a Swiss account.
EUR 100’000 of Lithuanian cover is real, EU-backed protection, and Revolut is no longer a fragile startup: the group reported revenue above £4.5 billion and £1.3 billion of net profit in 2025, with over 1.3 million customers in Switzerland alone. The realistic risk is procedural: in a crisis you’d be claiming through a foreign scheme in a foreign process.
Spend money, not savings. Keep Revolut loaded with what you’ll spend, not what you’ve saved. A few thousand francs of travel float sits comfortably inside any deposit scheme. Your salary, your savings and your emergency fund belong at a Swiss bank until Revolut is one.
Stocks, crypto and the rest of the app
Investing. Swiss customers can trade US and European stocks and ETFs through Revolut Securities Europe UAB, another Bank of Lithuania entity. Commission is 0.25% of the order with a minimum of CHF 1, or 0.12% on Ultra, and selected ETFs bought through the investment plan feature are commission-free. A robo-advisor is built in too. It’s a genuinely cheap way to place a first small trade, but there’s no Swiss tax statement, so every position becomes manual work in your tax return. For a real portfolio, the brokers on my online trading comparison are built for the job.
Crypto. Buying crypto inside Revolut is convenient and custodial: the coins sit in the app, provided by a Cypriot group entity under EU MiCA rules, and fees run well above what dedicated platforms charge. If crypto is more than a curiosity, buy it somewhere you can actually withdraw it: Swissquote if you want it held inside a FINMA-licensed Swiss bank, or Relai if you want a simple Swiss bitcoin-only app that sends the coins to your own wallet, where reader code HEROCH cuts the service fee by 10%. The full ladder is on my Swiss bitcoin guide.
The extras. Travel eSIMs bought in the app, disposable virtual cards for sketchy webshops, spending analytics, saving spaces, and accounts for kids and teens on the paid tiers. None of it is a reason to join on its own; together it explains why people who install Revolut for one trip still use it years later.
Opening a Revolut account from Switzerland
Download the app, enter your Swiss mobile number, photograph your ID and your face, and the account is usually open the same day. There’s no paperwork and no branch visit; the card arrives by post within a few days, and Apple Pay or Google Pay work immediately with the virtual card. The same Swiss Payment Monitor puts Apple Pay at 21.1% of the population and rising while TWINT, at 55.6%, has begun to fall, and here Revolut shows its one payment gap: no TWINT support yet, though a TWINT service is on the banking licence application’s wish list. It’s the smoothest onboarding of any provider reviewed on this site. Revolut invented the standard everyone else copied.
Getting started
As with my Wise review, it’s easier to look up the app directly in the App Store or Google Play than to start on the Revolut homepage. Once you’ve downloaded it and registered, carry on with the steps below.
Inside the app
I already have the app installed, so I’ll skip the registration and jump straight to the screens inside my account, all taken in September 2026. It’s easy to find your way around, and your account activity is the first thing you see when you open the app.
Two tabs I’d skip. Crypto works, but for bitcoin Relai is the better alternative in my view, and it sends the coins to your own wallet. RevPoints look generous until you do the maths: at 1 point per CHF 10 spent there’s not much value in them. They’re more a gamification trick to get you spending more.
Viewing your card details
Tap the card icon at the top right and you can see all your cards and their details. Next to the physical card there are virtual cards and disposable ones, which generate new card details after every use. That’s a handy feature for ordering online.
Perks, upsells and analytics
There are upsells and promotional links all through the app, which can feel a bit spammy, but some of the perks are worth a look. The perks screen lists airport lounge access, Fast Track through airport security and an eSIM for travel, and the paid plans add subscriptions such as Uber One and the Financial Times. When I checked, no Swiss airport was on the Fast Track list yet. Thankfully Zurich security is quick anyway.
You can also see your spending analytics and budgets, another nice and rather slick feature: what you spent, what came in and your net cash flow for the month, with no setup.
Those are the main sections of the app. It’s all very easy to browse, despite the upsells in the menus.
Who shouldn’t rely on Revolut
If you need one account for your whole Swiss life, salary in and rent out, that’s a Swiss bank’s job: my Swiss bank comparison ranks them, with Alpian and neon at the top. If you want banking, investing and pillar 3a in one Swiss app, read my Yuh review. And if you mainly send money abroad rather than spend it there, Wise is usually cheaper for large transfers; the comparison further down explains when.
Revolut vs the Swiss alternatives
Revolut vs neon
They do different jobs. neon is a proper Swiss main account: the IBAN is yours, deposits sit at Hypothekarbank Lenzburg with esisuisse cover, salary and QR-bills just work. Revolut beats it abroad, with better exchange rates on weekdays and multi-currency balances neon doesn’t offer. Plenty of readers run exactly this pair: neon for Swiss life, Revolut in the travel wallet.
The same comparison as a table, built from source-verified data. Pick another account to check any pairing yourself.
Revolut comparison
| Revolut | neon | |
|---|---|---|
| Account fee | CHF 0 (Standard) | 0 CHF (free plan) |
| Card | First card free + delivery commission; replacement CHF 5.99 | First card CHF 20; replacement CHF 20 |
| Card payments abroad | Revolut rate; CHF 1’250/month allowance then 1% fair-usage; +1% weekends | 0.35% card surcharge; ATM abroad 1.5% |
| TWINT | No | TWINT Prepaid only |
| Apple Pay | Yes | Yes |
| Interest | None on CHF (money-market funds only in EUR, GBP, USD) | 0% (none since Dec 2024) |
| Notes | Free ATM withdrawals up to 5 or CHF 200 a month. Banking licence in Lithuania, not Switzerland. | Plans changed on 18 Sep 2026: the free plan now charges for the first card and a 0.35% FX surcharge. TWINT only via TWINT Prepaid. |
| Reader deal | – | CHF 10 welcome bonus with code investinghero |
| My rating | ★ 4.6 | ★ 4.5 |
| Full review | – | Read the full neon review → |
Checked at source: Revolut 23 September 2026 · neon 23 September 2026
Revolut vs Yuh
Yuh is the all-in-one Swiss answer: a Swissquote-backed Swiss account with trading, crypto and pillar 3a under esisuisse cover, and it pays interest on CHF. Revolut wins on breadth of currencies, exchange rates and app polish, and loses on everything Swiss: no 3a, no Swiss protection, no salary account. If you’ll only have one app, Yuh is the safer choice for a Swiss resident; Revolut is the better second app.
Revolut vs Wise
The classic pairing, and they’re better at different things. Revolut is built around spending: the card, the app, the plans. Wise is built around moving money between currencies at the mid-market rate with one transparent fee and no monthly cap, which makes it the stronger tool for large or regular transfers, rent abroad, or salaries in another currency. Spend with Revolut, transfer with Wise, and neither plan upgrade is needed.
My rules for using Revolut
- Stay on Standard until the app proves otherwise. Premium pays for itself only past roughly CHF 2’500 of exchange a month, since 1% of the amount above the CHF 1’250 cap has to beat CHF 11.99. Check what you actually paid in fees last year before upgrading.
- Exchange on weekdays, before the trip. The 1% weekend fee on Standard is the most commonly paid Revolut fee, and it’s entirely avoidable. Load your holiday currency on Thursday.
- Don’t route your salary into it. The IBAN is in Revolut’s name and payroll systems reject it often enough to make it not worth the experiment. That changes if the Swiss banking licence is granted, not before.
- Keep the balance at spending size. Travel float in Revolut, savings at a Swiss bank. The EUR 100’000 Lithuanian cover is real, but there’s no reason to test it.
Revolut FAQ
Is Revolut safe to use in Switzerland?
Yes, within its design. Your money sits with Revolut Bank UAB, a Lithuanian bank regulated by the Bank of Lithuania and the European Central Bank, with deposits insured to EUR 100’000 under the Lithuanian scheme. Revolut (Switzerland) AG is the FINMA-authorised Swiss representative. What’s missing is Swiss deposit protection, so keep spending money in it, not savings.
Does Revolut have a Swiss IBAN?
Yes, since late 2024 every Swiss customer gets an individual CH IBAN through Revolut’s partnership with PostFinance. It’s held in Revolut’s name rather than yours, which is why topping up your own account works reliably while salary payments and some billers can fail their name checks.
Can my salary be paid into Revolut?
Sometimes, and I don’t recommend trying. Because the Swiss IBAN isn’t in your name, payroll systems that verify the recipient name reject it. Revolut has said proper salary accounts are part of the plan if its Swiss banking licence application succeeds. Until then, have your salary paid to a Swiss bank and forward what you need.
What does Revolut cost in Switzerland?
The Standard plan is CHF 0 a month, with CHF 1’250 of free weekday currency exchange and CHF 200 or five ATM withdrawals a month included. Beyond those limits you pay 1% on exchange, 1% extra on weekend exchanges, and 2% on ATM withdrawals with a CHF 1 minimum. Premium is CHF 11.99, Metal CHF 20.99, and Ultra CHF 65 a month, mainly buying unlimited exchange and bigger ATM allowances.
Is Revolut becoming a Swiss bank?
It’s trying. On 16 September 2026 Revolut applied to FINMA for a Swiss banking licence, promising Swiss IBANs, salary accounts, eBill and Swiss deposit protection if approved, with pillar 3a and TWINT under consideration. Approval isn’t guaranteed and takes time; Revolut’s UK licence took over three years. Nothing changes for existing accounts until FINMA decides.
Revolut or neon?
Both, for different jobs. neon is a Swiss main account with your own IBAN and esisuisse protection, so it handles salary, rent and bills. Revolut is the better travel wallet, with stronger exchange rates and 30+ currency balances. They cost nothing to combine, which is what many Swiss users do.
Revolut or Wise?
Revolut for spending abroad, Wise for sending money abroad. Wise converts at the mid-market rate with one transparent fee and no monthly cap, which wins for large transfers. Revolut’s free plan wins for card spending up to its cap, and its app does far more. Heavy travellers often carry both.
Can I invest with Revolut in Switzerland?
Yes. Stocks and ETFs trade at 0.25% commission with a CHF 1 minimum through Revolut Securities Europe UAB, and selected ETFs are commission-free via investment plans. There’s no Swiss tax statement, so your tax return is manual work per position. Fine for a first small trade; for a portfolio, use a dedicated broker.
Compare & choose
The other comparisons on Investing Hero, each built the same way: every fee read from the provider’s own pricing page.
Where Revolut sits against the Swiss neobanks, with the numbers side by side, is on my Swiss bank comparison. If the wider question is which card to carry abroad, the credit card comparison covers the travel section in depth.
How this review stays current. Every Revolut figure on this page comes straight from Revolut’s own Swiss fee pages and paid plan terms, version in force since 15 July 2026, read on 16 September 2026. Those pages are on my fee monitor, so when Revolut moves a price, the review moves with it.
Sources. Plan prices, exchange limits and ATM allowances from Revolut’s Swiss paid plan terms and Standard fee page; weekend fee and fair usage rules from Revolut’s Swiss help pages; entity and deposit protection details from Revolut’s own legal disclosures; all read 16 September 2026. Usage share from the Swiss Payment Monitor 2/2026, a study part-funded by the Swiss Payment Association, Nexi and Worldline. Banking licence application details from Revolut’s announcement of 16 September 2026 as reported by SWI swissinfo.ch. Group financials from Revolut’s published 2025 results. No figure on this page comes from a comparison site. Educational content, not financial advice.
