Revolut named in more police fraud reports than any UK bank last year

Revolut was named in more police fraud reports than any UK bank last year, new data has revealed, as the fintech prepares to launch as a fully-fledged lender in its home market.

The firm, which received a provisional UK banking licence in July, has come under fire for its approach to financial crime after a BBC Panorama investigation found it had been the subject of thousands more reports than any of its peers.

Last year, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime Action Fraud received nearly 10,000 reports of fraud in which Revolut was named, according to a Freedom of Information request submitted by Panorama.

London-based Revolut was founded in 2015 and surpassed 10m UK retail customers in September.

Its fraud reports were comfortably ahead of Barclays, which was named in almost 8,000 filings despite having about double Revolut’s customer numbers in the UK.

Main rivals Monzo and Starling were named in almost 5,000 and just over 1,000 reports respectively. Monzo passed 10m customers in August, while Starling has around 4.2m.

The Financial Ombudsman Service, which resolves disputes between consumers and financial firms, received around 3,500 complaints about Revolut in 2023.

That also outstripped all its peers and comes after Revolut began pushing back more on reimbursement requests last year.

Figures from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published in July showed that for every £1m paid into Revolut accounts last year, £756 was received via authorised push payment (APP) fraud.

While this marked an improvement from £1,158 in 2022, it was still more than 10 times worse than Barclays and four times more than Monzo.

The news comes shortly after new rules implemented by the PSR last week have made payment firms liable for reimbursing victims of APP fraud up to a limit of £85,000 per claim.

The cap was lowered last month from £415,000 after intense lobbying by fintechs, including Revolut, which warned it could put smaller firms out of business and encourage new types of scams.

Elsewhere, Revolut has been a vocal critic of Facebook owner Meta for not being held liable for reimbursement despite roughly three-quarters of APP fraud starting online.

APP fraud cost Britons £460m last year, according to banking trade body UK Finance. These scams involve tricking victims into transferring money from their bank account to a fraudster posing as a genuine payee.

City AM approached Revolut for comment.

The firm has previously said it takes fraud incredibly seriously. A spokesperson told Panorama that it has approaches to tackle it, including delaying payments “to allow customers to stop, think and complete additional checks”.

Revolut, which has more than 45m global users, signed up to the 159 anti-fraud helpline last month. The service was created by cross-industry body Stop Scams UK and helps potential fraud victims contact their bank.