Not upheld: scam reimbursement and fraud prevention obligations complaint against Revolut

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs A lost £1,150 to an advance-fee scam after being contacted with a fake job opportunity. She made four faster payments totalling £150 and exchanged £1,000 into cryptocurrency. Revolut reimbursed £136.17 under the FPS Reimbursement Rules (offsetting £106 in credits received from the scammer) and refused to refund the cryptocurrency losses. Mrs A complained that Revolut should have protected her from financial harm and refunded more. The ombudsman found Revolut's reimbursement calculation fair and determined that Revolut had no obligation to intervene in the cryptocurrency exchanges as they were not sufficiently unusual given the account's recent opening, Revolut's high transaction volume, and the legitimacy of cryptocurrency exchange as a service. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Revolut correctly applied the FPS Reimbursement Rules by reimbursing eligible faster payments and fairly offsetting the credits received against the scam payments to avoid overcompensation. Regarding the cryptocurrency exchanges, the ombudsman determined that Revolut had no obligation to intervene because: (1) the deposits into the account were not suspicious as they came from Mrs A's other account in the usual manner; (2) while the cryptocurrency exchanges were novel and high value, they were not significant enough in frequency or value to warrant intervention given Revolut's high transaction volume and the legitimacy of cryptocurrency exchange as a service; (3) Revolut's limited account history made it difficult to identify unusual patterns; and (4) Revolut could not have known of Mrs A's vulnerabilities at the time. The ombudsman balanced good industry practice in preventing financial harm against Revolut's ability to effectively run their business.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website