BBC News - Revolut customers say e-money firm failed them after being scammed - BBC News
Panorama, Britain’s Newest Bank: How Safe Is Your Money?: Panorama - Britain’s Newest Bank: How Safe Is Your Money? - BBC iPlayer via @bbciplayer
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Yes, this adds weight to my long-held concern that Revolut is not a worthy contender as a full bank in the UK.
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I find it odd that they compare to Monzo, who is tiny in scale compared to Revolut.
Barclays have also literally been at the forefront of all these regulations, existing before they did. Obviously Revolut’s compliance department won’t be as good.
But… it doesn’t matter? FSCS is there. Keeping all your eggs in one basket is… questionable. If Revolut is pushed under, your money is returned by the FSCS iirc in about 7 days from sometime next year.
I’m probably going to come across as a Revolut apologist or unsympathetic, but reading the article (and given the caveat that the facts aren’t all made available or totally clear) it sounds like a straightforward Authorised Push Payment scam.
Given that the APP scams code has only just come in now, and didn’t apply at the time of the events, Revolut were well within their rights to not refund this person.
The relevant details are:
In February, Jack was in a co-working space when he received a phone call from a scammer pretending to be from Revolut. He was told he was being called because his account might have been compromised through being on shared Wi-Fi.
Jack was tricked into handing over enough information to allow the scammers to put his Revolut account onto their device.
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For me, the individual case is less eye-catching than the reference made in the BBC article……
The BBC has found that Revolut was named in more reports of fraud in the last financial year than any of the major High Street banks.
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I’ve already heard so many horror stories about Revolut that I’m staying well clear.
I have an old e-money Revolut account that they never close even after multiple requests.
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My MiL just a couple of weeks back received a call from a scammer who was part of a courier card collection outfit. She almost fell for it but she called my Wife and told her what was happening and we put a stop to it immediately. We’ve had the same conversation with her at least 3 times about this very sort of thing. She keeps saying “What if?” We say, "Just put the phone down on them and call us or call Action Fraud for advice (we’ve given her the number). This is why I personally, enable Silence Unknown Callers on both iPhone and WhatsApp. I also have my phone number registered with the TPS. Over the last three months, I’ve received just 7 silenced calls from unknown or withheld numbers with no voicemail, text message or email follow ups.
Ok, I get it, there will be people who will always say they need to have the ability to be in contact with their GP surgery and therefore can’t or won’t enable SUC. I’ve visited my local GP surgery and informed them not to call me by phone but to message me securely via the NHS App. It didn’t seem to be an issue for them once I explained that I won’t answer my phone to blocked or withheld numbers. Anyway, that’s what I do and it clearly won’t work for everyone, especially for those that don’t operate in a digital world.
Revolut sure are getting bad press out of this exposé, but I’m still thinking that some folks really need to sit down and question themselves that after literally thousands of stories just like this that have circulated the media for several years now, that they are allowing themselves to be sucked into parting with their cash. Revolut undoubtedly do need to get better at fraud management, but people also need to fully evaluate the logic of some random claiming to be from their bank, convincing them to handover PIN numbers, move money into ‘safe’ accounts etc.
I await the next ‘big story’ involving hundreds of people stating they’ve been ripped off because they handed over all or part of their most private financial information and claiming that it wasn’t their fault. That sounds unsympathetic I know and I’m guessing they’ll never be a 100 percent fix to prevent this from occurring for many years down the line.
I actually think that the answer to this is simply some form of central call authentication for government services that are validated by the main carrier but that are outgoing only (i.e. the NHS can call you so it won’t go to VoiceMail, but you can’t call them back).
We keep saying “but the NHS calls on withheld”. Yeah, but they shouldn’t. It’s stupid
Literally the only reason why “silence unknown callers” isn’t turned off in England
To be fair, I have received genuine calls from several banks in the past year, starting off with ‘I just need to take you through security’. The banks really need to update their game and stop making calls like that.
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The only bank I’ve had any interaction with in the last 3 years, has been Chase via in App secure messaging and one telephone call from me when Chase stopped a large transfer of savings by me to another of my own bank accounts. That conversation lasted around 6 minutes whilst I was repeatedly asked who I was sending the money to and did I know the person I was sending the money to. There’s only so many ways one can say it’s me who is sending the money to myself because I’m being offered a better rate of interest elsewhere.
Of course as I never follow up silenced calls, I never know if any of my banking providers are trying to phone me. I have absolutely no fascination whatsoever for answering a ringing phone. If they ain’t in my contacts list, there’s no parlez from me. It’s not my problem if they won’t leave a message or a text that I can interrogate first. The NHS aren’t immune to sending text messages, I’ve had loads of them, so they don’t need to phone to get a message through.
I thought the whole purpose of secure in App messaging from a banking provider, was to ensure the integrity of communication between the bank and their client? If a telephone conversation was subsequently required, then this could be achieved via the App.
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