This Revolut customer had nearly 200,000 euros stolen: “The bank’s security measures are not sufficient”

Jack (whose name has not been revealed) gives his full attention to his interlocutor. After all, his professional account is opened with Revolut. The “bank manager” then manages to extract enough information from him to gain access to the account in question on another device, embezzling nearly 200,000 euros.

Any flaws at Revolut?

The technique used by the crook who scammed Jack is quite common in the banking world. It’s called “vishing.” A well-established technique which requires the scammer to pretend to be the anti-fraud department of the victim’s bank. The scammer then manages to extract enough information to transfer large sums of money from the account to a fraudulent account.

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Questioned by the BBC On his unfortunate experience, Jack directly pointed to Revolut’s security measures, which he said “failed to prevent the theft.. He claims that criminals “managed to bypass the identity verification process to access their account”. So far, Revolut has refused to refund this money but says it takes fraud very seriously and has “robust controls” to comply with its legal and regulatory obligations.

It’s exactly the security features that Revolut promotes in its ads that initially reassured Jack. The latter runs an international business and needs to hold several different currencies, so he opted for this online bank with more than 45 million customers worldwide, and whose revenues will almost triple in 2023, reaching 2.15 billion euros. Revolut customers are offered competitive exchange rates in an easy-to-use and secure app.

But when Jack was scammed out of his £165,000, he realized there were no emergency contacts offered by Revolut. Requiring him to contact an in-app chatbot feature. “I sent them this message: ‘I was scammed, could you freeze my account please'”he explains, adding that it ultimately took more than 20 minutes to be put in contact with the department capable of freezing his bank account. “In the meantime, more than 80,050 euros have been stolen from my account”he laments. Before adding that he felt largely abandoned by Revolut: “The fact that 137 individual payments were made to three new beneficiaries in the space of an hour should have raised concerns with Revolut”.

What is “vishing”, this new telephone scam technique?

Revolut declined to comment on Jack’s specific case, saying the matter was being examined by the mediator. Financial Ombudsman Servicewhich helps resolve disputes between consumers and UK businesses providing financial services. Last year, the same UK service received more than 3,500 complaints about Revolut, more than any other bank.