Not upheld: Card / payment disputes complaint against Revolut Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs M complained that Revolut held her liable for three transfers totalling £1,138 made to a cryptocurrency exchange, which she claimed her nephew made without her consent while she was at work. Revolut refused to refund the transactions because they were made using Mrs M's registered device and PIN with no failed login attempts. The Ombudsman found Mrs M's testimony inconsistent, noting that an attempted transaction to the same payee occurred two days before she claimed to have left her phone at home, and that the likelihood of her nephew guessing both her Revolut and Bank B PINs without failed attempts was implausible. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The Ombudsman applied the two-limb test for authorisation: authentication and consent. While Mrs M's account was authenticated using her genuine PIN, the Ombudsman found Mrs M's testimony regarding consent to be inconsistent and implausible. Specifically, Mrs M's claim that she left her phone at home on 3 March was contradicted by the existence of an attempted transaction two days earlier, which she said she didn't notice. Additionally, Mrs M's claim that her nephew guessed both her Revolut PIN and her Bank B PIN without failed attempts was implausible. The undated and incomplete WhatsApp messages did not support her claim that her nephew was scammed.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website