Not upheld: scam fraud - refund claim complaint against Revolut Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mr G complained that Revolut should refund £7,886 he lost to an investment scam after being contacted via messaging application by company X. Mr G made 46 payments via card (Apple Pay) between March and July 2025 before realising the scam. Revolut attempted chargebacks but these were unsuccessful. The ombudsman found that Revolut had no reasonable grounds to intervene in the payments, as the individual amounts were not significant, the payee was not a high-risk category, and it would be unreasonable to expect Revolut to monitor overseas regulatory warnings or reject unregulated firms. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while Mr G fell victim to a cruel scam, Revolut had no reasonable obligation to intervene. The individual payment amounts and daily totals were not significant enough to raise concerns about financial harm. The payments were not to high-risk payee types such as cryptocurrency exchanges. It would be unreasonable to expect Revolut to monitor overseas regulatory warnings that had not filtered through to UK regulators or to reject all payments to unregulated firms, as this does not indicate a scam. Chargebacks were attempted but unsuccessful, leaving Revolut with no recovery options.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website