Not upheld: Authorised Push Payment (APP) scam - reimbursement claim complaint against Monzo Bank Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Miss D fell victim to a job task scam in September 2025, making five payments totalling £510 to a cryptocurrency account in her own name that fraudsters had instructed her to open. She sought reimbursement from Monzo, but the bank declined on the basis that the Reimbursement Rules required transfers to another person's account. The ombudsman upheld Monzo's decision, finding that Miss D had authorised the payments, the transaction amounts were not remarkable enough to trigger fraud alerts, and there was nothing Monzo could do to recover funds once they had been converted to cryptocurrency and transferred to scammer-controlled wallets.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Miss D authorised the payments, making her responsible under the Payment Service Regulations 2017. The Reimbursement Rules did not apply because payments went to an account in Miss D's own name rather than another person's account. The transaction amounts were not remarkable or significant enough to alert Monzo to potential fraud, and payments to cryptocurrency exchanges do not automatically indicate scams. The ombudsman noted that banks must balance fraud prevention against processing high volumes of legitimate transactions. Once funds were converted to cryptocurrency and transferred to scammer wallets, there was nothing further Monzo could do to recover them.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website