Revolut reaches agreement with SIBS and officially joins MB Way

As of this Monday, Revolut is now integrated into the MB Way network and allows immediate transfers through the app, like other Portuguese banks. The British financial institution, which has over two million customers in Portugal, has formalised its agreement with SIBS to join Multibanco, which was “the biggest barrier to becoming the main bank account for Portuguese people”.

“This has been a personal struggle since I joined Revolut. I always said that to win in Portugal, we needed the Multibanco network. Since the summer, we have grown at unprecedented levels. I believe that the expectation regarding the local IBAN is really accelerating growth”, Ignacio Zunzunegui, Revolut’s Head of Growth in Southern Europe, explained to ECO.

What changes with Revolut’s integration into MB Way? It is another step forward in competition with other banks, because anyone with a company card can now make payments (online and offline) using QR codes, pay bills, service charges or taxes to the State using Multibanco references, and withdraw cash at ATMs. Until now, because of the Visa and MasterCard networks, this was not possible.

Ignacio Zunzunegui also explains that there will be a virtual Revolut Mutibanco card that can be used to make payments at POS (Point of Sale) systems — such as supermarkets, shops, or restaurants — that are not compatible with Visa.

Portuguese IBAN still in transition

The company is migrating the accounts of more than two million customers to the local branch (Revolut Bank UAB — Branch in Portugal) and, therefore, to the Portuguese IBAN ‘PT50’, but refuses to disclose the status of the process. “It is proceeding as expected. We expect to continue the migration until the end of 2025 and complete it by then. If not entirely, then almost entirely”, said Ignacio Zunzunegui on the sidelines of the inauguration of the company’s new headquarters in London.

Revolut’s leader in southern Europe is “optimistic” about all the fintech developments in the Portuguese market and has an explicit ambition: to reach the podium. “I believe that Portugal is one of the places where we have made the most progress in the main bank account. I believe we will be one of the top three entities”, predicts the Spanish manager.

When asked about the problems with transfer delays reported to ECO, Ignacio Zunzunegui assures that “this should not be the case”, because the change to ‘PT50’ does not change “anything” other than the IBAN from Lithuania (‘LT59’) to the national one, which allows users to receive their salary every month through their Revolut account, if they so wish.

“The fact that we have a different IBAN should not change how it works. In a transfer, there are two sides: the bank that sends the money and the bank that receives the money. Sometimes we control 50% of the transaction, the other 50% may be delayed, and this is often due to the recipient bank’s risk assessment”, he explains, adding that the creation of a branded ATM remains in the plans.

When all customers migrate to the Portuguese branch, they will have access to a new product called ‘Immediate Access Savings’ to make money through deposits and withdrawals of up to €100,000, with variable interest rates of 1.50% to 2.25% TANB (Gross Nominal Annual Rate).

“I can share with you the example of our neighbouring country. In Spain, we launched this a year ago and, since then, we have managed to acquire €1.3 billion in deposits. My expectation is that Portugal, which has shown great adoption of products in the past, will have a lot of uptake for this new savings product”, anticipates Ignacio Zunzunegui.