Neobank Revolut adds Stellar: why it's important
If you follow only crypto, then perhaps you’ve never heard of Revolut. And yet, it’s the most popular neobanking (or digital banking) app in the world. XLM becomes the 6th crypto coin offered in the app. Here’s what you need to know about Revolut — and our take on if you should use it.
Your bank might already offer an online banking app, so you probably know how they work. You can transfer money, pay your bills and mortgage, and so on. But for many other things, you’ll still need to go to your local bank branch office.
Neobanks offer most of the services that you get in a regular bank, but they don’t have any physical offices. Opening accounts, deposits, transfers — everything is done in the app. Plus, they have features that you can’t get in a standard online banking app, such as currency conversion, investment in stocks, and cryptocurrency purchases.
The largest and best-known neobank is Revolut: a UK company whose app works all around Europe. It currently has over 4.5 million customers. The service includes a prepaid card and supports 29 currencies, and you can exchange from one to another without fees at interbank rates. It’s very convenient if you travel across Europe.
Plus — and this is the part that interests us — Revolut offers cryptocurrency exposure. You can buy, convert, and sell crypto within the app — but you can’t transfer it to an external wallet. However, it’s possible to send your crypto to another Revolut user. The limitations are mostly for compliance reasons. By the way, Revolut also works in the US.
Revolut already supports BTC, BCH, ETH, and XRP — and now it has also added XLM. According to the company, it received a flood of requests from users who were asking to enable Stellar support. Revolut’s representatives also hinted that it’s just the first step on the way to overhauling the firm’s crypto products, so who knows? Maybe it will become possible to send crypto in and out of the app in the future.
For Stellar, this is a huge step forward in terms of publicity: now it’s associated with the most famous fintech app in Europe. It comes as a new step in a series of new partnerships that we’ve covered before. Stellar will get additional coverage in the media, its reputation will increase, and this can lead to an increase in price.
But what does this news mean for you as a user of XLMwallet? On the one hand, if you live in Europe, you should really consider getting a Revolut wallet. It’s very well done and if you travel a lot and pay in foreign currencies, you can save quite a lot of money.
On the other hand, you can’t send your XLM to a Revolut wallet or withdraw it from there. The Revolut solution is aimed at beginners who have never used crypto before — a sort of a cautious first-time exposure. But if you already have a crypto wallet, you won’t gain much from the crypto features in Revolut.
So, there is no choice between the XLMwallet and the Revolut wallet. They are not mutually replaceable. XLMwallet gives you full control over your crypto, while with Revolut you can control your fiat. Both are very valuable.
How do you think the price of Stellar will react to this news? Do you expect more growth? Share in the comments!
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