User Research on Revolut's Subscription Value and Fee Friction

Phase 01 · User research

✳The problem they went after

Revolut works well enough for travellers and digital nomads on the free plan that paying feels optional. This phase goes looking for the P0 problem behind that. Two pain points surface early: weekend surcharges on international transfers, which push people over to Wise, and a transaction search that only works if you already remember the exact merchant name.

✳What they actually did

Two interviews first, then a survey and a SWOT to check whether the pattern held. Seventy percent of respondents named high weekend fees, and fifty percent said subscriptions were not worth the money. From there, two personas: an EU-based freelancer who simply avoids Revolut on weekends, and a lifestyle optimiser who wants one app for travel, parking and payments. The opportunities follow the personas rather than a feature backlog: modular custom plans, targeted weekend fee waivers, in-app flight and parking booking.

✳What you can take from it

Worth stealing

Interview findings cross-checked against survey percentages
SWOT used to confirm findings rather than decorate them
Personas built around one concrete avoidance behaviour each
Weekend fee friction traced straight to a competitor switch

Read this if

Anyone new to user research who wants to watch interviews become personas

The transferable bitA good example of research that ends somewhere. The interviews are not a transcript dump; each finding gets checked against survey numbers, converted into a persona with one specific behaviour attached, and then into an opportunity. Notice too that the business goal is stated as conversion among already active users, which keeps the opportunity list narrow instead of open-ended.

✳The submission itself

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Phase 02 · Solution brainstorm

Improving Paid Plan Conversion for Revolut Users

✳The problem they went after

Active Revolut users on the free plan cannot see what a paid tier buys them. Fee waivers, premium features and bundled app subscriptions all exist, but none are communicated at a moment that matters and none are experienced first. So users stay free, or they move their international transfers to Wise, and premium conversion stays flat.

✳What they actually did

The brainstorm spreads across three angles: building trust, making pricing legible, and testing new features. Higher-confidence ideas included personalised benefit education built around travel insurance, 24/7 in-app banking support, exchange rates guaranteed for a fixed window, and a comparison tool showing fee savings against rival apps. RICE then cut the list to three: a one-month free trial on every paid-plan app subscription, weekend transfer fees removed with a capped free international limit, and the rate guarantee.

✳What you can take from it

Worth stealing

Brainstorm grouped by type of user doubt
RICE applied to a genuinely varied idea set
Free trial framed as risk removal, not promotion
Rate guarantee answering a specific competitor advantage

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Working on subscription conversion and stuck generating ideas beyond discounting

The transferable bitGrouping ideas by the kind of doubt they answer, trust, price clarity, feature value, is what stops the list collapsing into ten variations on a discount. That organising step happens before anything is scored. The three survivors all lower perceived risk before asking for money, a pattern that carries to any subscription upgrade problem.

✳The submission itself

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Phase 03 · The PRD

Driving Premium Upgrades Through Trials and Transparent Pricing

✳The problem they went after

Premium at Revolut fails on discovery, not on substance. Partner app access and transfer fee waivers are real, but free-plan users never touch them, so the benefits read as abstract, expensive, or irrelevant to an ordinary week. Subscription revenue sits below its potential while Wise picks up the cost-conscious people sending money across borders.

✳What they actually did

Two mechanisms carry the document. A one-month free trial hands standard users the full set of partner apps, so the value is experienced before it is priced. Removing weekend transfer fees and adding a fixed number of free monthly international transfers makes pricing legible for anyone sending money abroad. Measurement covers upgrade conversion during and after the trial, partner app engagement inside the trial, and free transfer volume, with a guardrail protecting existing subscribers.

✳What you can take from it

Worth stealing

Trial measured on in-trial engagement, not just conversion
Existing subscribers protected by an explicit guardrail
Free transfer cap makes pricing predictable, not merely cheaper
One mechanism per failure mode, kept separate

Read this if

Writing a PRD for a freemium upgrade that needs a clean metric tree

The transferable bitValue users cannot feel gets a trial; pricing users cannot predict gets a structural fee change. Separating those two failure modes and giving each its own mechanism is what makes the shortlist coherent. The guardrail on existing subscribers is the mature detail, since new transparency should not quietly leave current paying customers feeling like they overpaid.