Revolut Business Review

Revolut Business is the merchant-acceptance arm of Revolut, the London fintech founded in 2015 by Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It is unusual in this directory for a simple reason: it publishes a complete rate card. A merchant can read, before speaking to anyone, that in-person domestic consumer Visa and Mastercard transactions cost 0.8% + £0.02, that the same cards online cost 1% + £0.20, that commercial and international cards cost 2.6% + £0.02 in person and 2.8% + £0.20 online, that a Revolut Terminal is £169 + VAT and a Lite Terminal £129 + VAT, and that a chargeback dispute resolved in the merchant's favour returns £15. Acceptance is a sub-account of a Revolut Business account rather than a separate merchant account with a separate provider, so settlement lands in the same balance the business already banks from, in as little as 24 hours. The important limit is geographic: Revolut has offered acquiring across the UK and continental Europe since 2020–21 — its own January 2021 announcement put the count at 29 European countries, a figure it has not refreshed since — and launched a full merchant-acquiring suite in Australia during 2026. It publishes no United States card-acceptance rates. In March 2026 Revolut exited the Bank of England's mobilisation phase and received a full UK banking licence, roughly twenty months after being granted one with restrictions in July 2024.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Revolut Business’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

An acquirer that shows you the price

Most of this directory is a study in what companies will not tell you. Revolut Business is the opposite case, and it is worth saying so first because it is genuinely uncommon: the entire card-acceptance rate card is on a public page, broken out by card type and by channel, with hardware prices next to it. Domestic consumer Visa and Mastercard cost 0.8% + £0.02 in person and 1% + £0.20 online. Domestic consumer American Express costs 1.7%. Commercial cards and all international cards cost 2.6% + £0.02 in person and 2.8% + £0.20 online. Revolut Pay, the company's own account-to-account checkout, is cheaper still at 0.5% + £0.02 in person. A Revolut Terminal is £169 + VAT; the Lite Terminal is £129 + VAT. Win a chargeback and £15 comes back.

The structural idea behind it matters as much as the numbers. Revolut does not sell a merchant account that pays into your bank. The merchant account is a sub-account of the Revolut Business account, so takings land in the same multi-currency balance the business already pays suppliers from, usually within 24 hours and including weekends. There is no separate provider relationship, no separate portal, no separate monthly acquiring bill, and no term or early-termination fee. You switch it on, and you switch it off.

Where the cheap number stops being cheap

The 0.8% headline describes one row of the table. A business whose customers pay on corporate cards, or a shop in a tourist district taking foreign-issued cards, is on 2.6% or 2.8% — which is not a bargain, it is roughly what an expensive flat-rate competitor charges for everything. Before treating Revolut as the cheap option, look at a month of your own settlements and work out what share is domestic consumer plastic. That single ratio decides whether this is a saving or a rounding error.

There is a second qualification, and it is the one most likely to catch an American reader. Revolut's published acquiring is a European product. The company rolled it out across the UK and continental Europe in 2020 and 2021, announcing in January 2021 that businesses in 29 European countries could accept card payments — a count it has never refreshed, and one attached to rates of 1.3% and 2.8% that the current rate card has long since replaced, so check your own market rather than the press release. During 2026 it launched a full merchant-acquiring suite in Australia. There is no published US card-acceptance rate card, and Revolut's US business offering is an account rather than a documented acquiring product. Revolut does operate in the United States, so a US merchant should ask directly — but should not plan around acceptance until it is confirmed in writing.

The risk you take on with the price

In April 2025 the Bank of Lithuania fined Revolut Bank UAB, the group's EEA banking entity, €3.5 million for shortcomings in monitoring business relationships and transactions — the largest anti-money-laundering penalty imposed in Lithuania at the time. The regulator did not find that laundering had occurred; it found that the systems meant to spot it were not adequate. That distinction matters less to a merchant than it sounds, because the same function that misses what it should catch is the one that catches what it should not. Frozen accounts are the most persistent complaint made against Revolut in any of its businesses, and support is chat-first and app-based, which is a poor fit for the day your settlement does not arrive.

Set against that, the regulatory picture has improved. Revolut was granted a UK banking licence with restrictions in July 2024 and spent roughly twenty months in the Bank of England's mobilisation phase before receiving full authorisation in March 2026, at which point it began rolling out fully licensed accounts. That is a slower path than Revolut wanted and a real strengthening of the entity sitting behind the acquiring.

Who should actually buy this

The natural customer is a small or mid-sized European or Australian business that already uses Revolut Business as its operating account, takes most of its money from domestic consumer cards, and wants acceptance without adding a supplier. For that business the offer is close to unbeatable: the lowest published in-person rate on the market, next-day money into an account it already holds, no term, no ETF, no lease, and a terminal it owns outright.

The businesses that should look elsewhere are the ones the rate card quietly excludes. High-volume merchants will do better on interchange-plus, and Revolut says so itself by routing them to sales. Heavily B2B or international sellers land in the expensive band. US merchants have no published offer to buy. And any business for which a funding hold would be fatal should think hard before putting its banking and its card acceptance inside the same company, however good the price is.

The verdict

B, and the grade is a balance of two strong opposing forces rather than a shrug. On one side: published pricing at a level of detail nearly nobody else here matches, genuinely low in-person rates, next-day settlement, no contract and no hidden equipment lease. On the other: a cheap rate that applies to a narrower slice of transactions than the headline suggests, acquiring that does not cover the United States, a support operation that is the company's weakest point, and a 2025 regulatory penalty aimed squarely at the risk systems that decide whether merchants get paid on time. Price it against your own card mix, confirm it is available where you trade, and keep a fallback.