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Revolut Breaks Into Multibanco, Puts PT50 IBANs in Your Pocket

Economy,  Tech
By The Portugal Post, The Portugal Post
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The conversation Portuguese commuters used to have at the cash register—“Visa or Multibanco?”—is about to change. Revolut’s long-promised leap into the national payment grid, complete with local IBANs and a new savings tool, finally gives the British-born fintech the one ingredient customers in Portugal said was missing: seamless day-to-day usability.

A rail that rules them all

For anyone new to the country, Multibanco is more than an ATM network. It is Portugal’s de-facto public utility for payments, enabling everything from tax settlements to lottery bets. SIBS, the private group that operates the platform, rarely opens the door to outsiders. Revolut spent nearly three years negotiating its way in, a process insiders liken to “technical diplomacy.” The reward is immediate: a single QR scan now settles a café bill, and the same app can generate the familiar 15-digit reference to pay electricity or customs duties—tasks that previously forced users back to a traditional bank.

New tricks in your pocket

The upgrade lands in two flavours. First, every Revolut card—physical or digital—now sits on the “PT Multibanco” rails, meaning it works in shops that only accept domestic debit. Second, the app generates a virtual Multibanco card locked to a smartphone wallet for those rare tills that still reject Visa. Users can also pull cash from any ATM, not just the handful that support international schemes. Early testing shows withdrawal fees identical to local incumbents, a crucial detail for budget travellers who once paid extra to access their own money.

IBAN PT50: a passport to salary deposits

Until July the typical customer account started with “LT59”, a Lithuanian prefix that many Portuguese employers and utility giants quietly mistrusted—despite EU law. Now, Revolut is moving 2M accounts to “PT50” in waves. The Bank of Portugal signed off on the branch licence last spring, though deposits remain, for now, under Lithuania’s deposit guarantee. Revolut insists the switch is cosmetic to the rails but vital to user psychology: salary, mortgage repayments and direct debits are less likely to be refused once the account looks local. Migration emails give each client six weeks to accept new terms; management says “nearly three-quarters” click yes within 48 hours.

The savings war reignites

Competition is fiercest on the interest-rate shelf. Revolut’s Immediate Access Savings pays between 1.50 % and 2.25 % TANB, credited daily and capped at €100,000. That is modest compared with ActivoBank’s 5 % on the first €5,000 or Bankinter’s 5 % year-one promotion, yet those rates come with tight ceilings or salary requirements. Against big-five lenders, Revolut’s offer looks generous: Caixa Geral de Depósitos pays 1.25 % on a six-month time deposit and charges penalties for early exit. The new product therefore targets the middle ground—customers who want flexibility but also demand something better than the near-zero returns still common on current accounts.

How the deal finally happened

People close to the talks say the breakthrough came when SIBS agreed to treat Revolut’s Portuguese branch as a full “issuer” rather than a mere e-money institution, allowing direct settlement instead of routing transactions via Visa. Engineers on both sides spent the summer rewriting middleware so that Revolut’s cloud infrastructure could speak the Multibanco ISO 8583 dialect. One insider calls it “the most complex fintech integration SIBS has done since MB Way launched.”

What this means for the incumbents

Traditional banks may shrug at Revolut’s 2 % yields, but they fear the platform effect: once a consumer directs salary, bills and spending into a single tap, churn rates plummet. Industry consultants forecast double-digit market-share erosion among under-35s if incumbents fail to match frictionless features. Unlike earlier neobank forays, this move hits the very services—pagamentos de serviços and MB Way transfers—that hold account relationships together.

The road ahead

Revolut executives tease two milestones for 2026: branded ATMs in Lisbon and Porto and rollout of small-business terminals that undercut traditional acquirers on fees. Ignacio Zunzunegui, who heads Southern Europe, says the ambition is clear: “to sit in the country’s top three retail banks by active users.” Whether the local arm can meet that goal without shifting its deposit guarantee to Portugal is another debate, yet the momentum is unmistakable. For the average user, what matters is simple: the moment the cashier asks for a Multibanco pin, the Revolut card now works—and that makes all the difference.