Not upheld: scam loss and refund liability complaint against Revolut Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mr C lost £800 when he fell victim to a task-based job scam on social media, purchasing cryptocurrency via Revolut and sending it to a scammer's wallet. He complained to Revolut for a refund, which was rejected, and escalated to the Financial Ombudsman. The ombudsman found that the transaction presented low fraud risk on a newly-opened account and did not warrant additional checks. Although Revolut carried out automated fraud prevention checks at the crypto withdrawal stage, Mr C provided inaccurate answers (coached by the scammer), which would have reassured Revolut the transaction was legitimate. The ombudsman concluded Revolut could not reasonably have prevented the loss and therefore was not responsible for the refund.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that the £800 fiat-to-crypto exchange transaction presented a low risk of financial harm from fraud, particularly given it was a relatively low-value transaction on a newly-opened account with no prior usage history. Although crypto carries known fraud risk, the vast majority of crypto transactions are legitimate. Even if Revolut should have identified a risk and carried out additional checks, the ombudsman was not persuaded a proportionate intervention would have prevented the loss, because Mr C provided inaccurate responses to Revolut's fraud prevention questions (due to scammer coaching), which would have reassured Revolut the transaction was legitimate. The ombudsman could not fairly hold Revolut responsible for Mr C being manipulated by the scammer. Causation was not established: Revolut's failure to intervene (if any) would not have prevented the loss.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website