Upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against Wise Payments Limited trading as Wise

Decision detail

Summary

Mr A lost approximately £180,000 to a cryptocurrency investment scam between March 2023 and January 2024 through payments made via his Wise account. Wise declined to refund the authorised payments, but the ombudsman found Wise should have intervened with human contact by payment 9 when the pattern of four large cryptocurrency payments in 24 hours was highly unusual. The ombudsman upheld the complaint in part, requiring Wise to refund 100% of payments 9-30 and 50% of payments 31 and 34-36, with Mr A bearing shared responsibility from payment 31 onwards after another bank clearly warned him in December 2023 that he was a scam victim.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

Wise should have intervened at payment 4 with an onscreen warning about cryptocurrency investment scams, but such a warning would not have prevented the loss. By payment 9, the pattern of payments (four transactions over £19,000 in 24 hours to cryptocurrency exchanges) was so unusual that Wise should have conducted human intervention with a call to discuss the payments. If Wise had called, it is more likely than not the scam would have been uncovered. Mr A bears shared responsibility from payment 31 onwards because another bank clearly warned him on 19 December 2023 that he was a scam victim, and he should have then conducted checks that would have revealed the FCA warning about the scammer.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website