The war on Ukraine: our response

26 February 2022Team Revolut

The war in Ukraine has been heartbreaking for us.

Many people may already know that one of our co-founders is Ukrainian, but it may not be common knowledge that a number of our staff are based in Ukraine as well. Our number one concern is and always will be the safety of our colleagues, who we consider family.

Revolut may be a British company, but we’re deeply proud to employ people from all over the world, and that means when terrible things happen where our people live, we have a duty to do everything we can to support them.

From the outset of this crisis, we focused first and foremost on doing all we could to safeguard our people in Ukraine, and to support them and their families.

As matters intensified, we offered relocation support to all of our Ukraine-based employees, if they wished to move. This support was made available whether our people wanted to relocate to another country, or to somewhere else within Ukraine.

We engaged a global security solutions partner to provide our people with guidance, emergency logistical support and the latest security updates in the country. Plus, we’re continuously monitoring and evaluating to see if there’s more we can do to support our friends and colleagues.

As the full extent of the Russian invasion started to become clear, however, we also started to turn our thoughts to what we could do to support all the other people in Ukraine impacted by these dreadful events.

First up, we made sure that people who wanted to send money to or from banks in Ukraine could still do that. We’ve also waived transfer fees for sending money to a Ukrainian bank account.

Second, we wanted to support the humanitarian relief programs for those impacted. The best way to do that was through our long-standing charity partner, the Red Cross. By Friday, we had enabled millions of our customers in the UK, Lithuania, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria and Singapore to donate money to Ukrainian relief efforts so they can support the people of Ukraine. We’re working on adding more, and as always with Revolut charity donations, donations to the Red Cross are instant, free, and 100% of the money given goes to the charity.

Of course in the meantime, we’ll do our job. As a UK business operating globally, regulated by the FCA and many others, Revolut operates in compliance with all applicable sanctions, laws and legislation. We’ll continue to monitor the situation carefully and will take further action as necessary. We’ll also make sure our customers’ services stay running, and continue to safeguard their money. Learn more about our security standards.

We’re all deeply grateful to those who have already donated so much to the Red Cross appeal. Your generosity will make a world of difference to people whose lives have been torn apart by this horrific conflict. And meanwhile, all of us at Revolut will continue to do everything in our power, on behalf of what matters to us most: our people.

Team Revolut

UPDATES:

28 February - 6 March

We enabled donations to the Red Cross Ukraine appeal in the rest of the EEA countries, and committed to match donations made between 1 - 8 March, up to £1.5 million.  

Our teams came together to donate their team engagement budgets and event funds to the Red Cross, resulting in over £80,000 donated.

We proactively stopped supporting all transfers to or from any financial institution in Russia or Belarus, and top-ups from cards issued in either Russia or Belarus.

7-13 March

In just over a week, the amount donated to the Red Cross Ukraine appeal reached £10 million with more than 300,000 customers donating, and Revolut matched £1.5 million of these donations.

14-20 March

We launched payment services for refugees fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, so that individuals displaced by the invasion have quick and easy access to their money. We eased many of the requirements needed to set up an account as well as waived a number of FX and top-up fees. In just over a week, we’ve onboarded over 19,000 new users this way.

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