Revolution Money was a financial services company based in

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...

. The company's products included a PIN based

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

, online person to person payments service, with a linked stored value card, and gift card. Revolution Money was created as the only credit card that did not charge retailers

interchange fee Interchange fee is a term used in the payment card industry to describe a fee paid between banks for the acceptance of card-based transactions. Usually for sales/services transactions it is a fee that a merchant's bank (the "acquiring bank") pay ...

s. The company partnered with

Yahoo! Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. B ...

and

Fifth Third Bank Fifth Third Bank (5/3 Bank), the principal subsidiary of Fifth Third Bancorp is an American bank holding company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fifth Third is one of the largest consumer banks in the Midwestern United States, Fifth Third ...

. Revolution Money had three products: RevolutionCard credit card, Revolution MoneyExchange which provides free online money transfers between members, and RevolutionGift, a gift card. Revolution MoneyExchange accounts were issued by

First Bank and Trust Founded in 1991, First Bank and Trust is a New Orleans-based independent bank with branch locations across the Gulf Coast. The main office is located in Downtown New Orleans inside the First Bank and Trust Tower First Bank and Trust has branche ...

Background

Revolution MoneyExchange was an online bank intended as an alternative to

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

and its chief competitor,

Google Checkout Google Checkout was an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. It was discontinued on November 20, 2013 and the service moved to Google Wallet (now called Google Pay). ...

. It was founded as GratisCard in April 2007.

Ted Leonsis Theodore John Leonsis (born January 8, 1957) is an American businessman, investor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and former politician. He is a former senior executive with America Online (AOL), and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Monument ...

and Steve Case were on its board of directors. Revolution MoneyExchange was backed by

Citi Citigroup Inc. or Citi (stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomer ...

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

, and

Deutsche Bank AG Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stoc ...

, as well as its parent company, Revolution LLC. There were no fees charged for online transfers between accounts. The Revolution MoneyExchange Card was a

stored-value card A stored-value card (SVC) is a payment card with a monetary value stored on the card itself, not in an external account maintained by a financial institution. This means no network access is required by the payment collection terminals as funds ...

that allowed account holders to access their funds for purchases at merchant locations on the RevolutionCard network and for cash withdrawals at ATMs nationwide. RevolutionGift was a prepaid PIN based

gift card A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...

with no account number printed on the card. Other features included the capacity to send money via

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM w ...

. On November 18, 2009, American Express announced that it would acquire Revolution Money for US$500 million, and finally did for US$300 million. Revolution MoneyExchange was purchased by American Express in January 2010, and was renamed Serve Virtual Enterprises, Inc. Serve Enterprises then launched Serve and discontinued Revolution MoneyExchange on March 28, 2011.

References

External links

* * * * * * * * * * *{{cite news , first=Keith , last=Regan , title=A Host of Hot Niches on the E-Commerce VC Trail , url=http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/61104.html , work=E-Commerce Times , date= January 9, 2008 , access-date=2008-07-22 Credit cards in the United States Payment systems Companies based in St. Petersburg, Florida American companies established in 2007 2007 establishments in Florida