Not upheld: scam and fraud - refusal to refund complaint against Vanquis Bank Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr A complained that Vanquis Bank Limited refused to refund £800 he lost to a cryptocurrency scam. Mr A claimed he was misled into making three payments (£200, £200, and £400) between March and April 2025 after being contacted by a scammer via a messaging app offering to sell cryptocurrency. The ombudsman found the payments were authorised by Mr A himself, were not sufficiently unusual to warrant Vanquis intervention, and that a chargeback would have had no reasonable prospect of success. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Mr A authorised the payments himself by completing the payment process, even though he was misled about the amounts and cryptocurrency received. Under the Payment Services Regulations 2017, customers are liable for authorised payments. The payments were not sufficiently unusual to warrant Vanquis intervening - they were of relatively low individual values, made to a legitimate merchant, and did not form part of a suspicious pattern. A chargeback would have had no reasonable prospect of success since Mr A admitted making the payments himself and provided no supporting evidence of what was agreed with the seller.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website