Not upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against Revolut Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mr S lost approximately £2,500 to an investment scam between 26-28 October 2025 after being deceived into believing he was participating in a legitimate restaurant reviews project. He made multiple payments from his Revolut account to various payees and claimed Revolut should refund his losses. Revolut declined the claim, noting it had intervened on some payments and provided warnings. The ombudsman did not uphold the complaint, finding that the individual payments were not sufficiently suspicious to require intervention, Revolut did provide appropriate fraud and investment scam warnings, and Mr S's responses indicated he believed the opportunity was legitimate. The ombudsman concluded Revolut could not fairly be held responsible for losses from an authorised payment even though Mr S was deceived by a scammer.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

Under Payment Services Regulations 2017, customers are responsible for authorised payments even if lost to scams. While firms should intervene where payments appear suspicious, the individual payments here were not especially high in value and were made over only three days, insufficient to trigger intervention obligations. Revolut did intervene on some payments and provided appropriate warnings including fraud and investment scam alerts. Mr S's responses to these warnings indicated he believed the opportunity was legitimate and was not being pressured. Even if Revolut had intervened further, it is unclear this would have prevented losses given the extent of the scammer's influence over Mr S.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website