Complaints made to the Financial Ombudsman of “authorised” scams on the platform have gone from 242 to 516 in just two years, The Telegraph reported.
Monzo had 274 new complaints to the ombudsman so far in this financial year and Starling had 193 in the same period.
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Revolut has also suffered a data breach of tens of thousands of customers’ personal data in Sept 2022 following a cyber attack.
Tara, who lost £2,000 in an authorised push payment (APP) scam over the app, told The Telegraph: “All along, I should have just trusted a larger, more well-known institution, which just wouldn’t have data breaches of this scale. I prioritised convenience and I should have prioritised security.”
Deborah Wright lost £8,000 of savings from her Revolut accounts to fraud in October, BBC reported.
Unlike banks, Revolut is not signed up to a code that aims to reimburse customers for this type of fraud.
The 55-year-old dog groomer got a phone call from a man claiming to be from the Virgin Money fraud department. The fraudster said her bank account was under attack, and persuaded her to download some software that allowed him to take control of her computer.
Galway West TD Mairéad Farrell has urged people to be careful over the Christmas period in light of a new scam which is being perpetrated on users of Revolut.
The scam involves a gang that use a fake taxi, and the driver attempts to gain access to the victim’s phone and then makes fraudulent transfer payments through Revolut.
The scammers are targeting young people who are using taxis late at night and are under the influence of alcohol. One victim was reported to have lost almost €4,000.
Aaron Elliott-Gross, head of fraud and financial crime at Revolut, told The Telegraph: “The number of times that we’ve seen some of our customers exposed to these types of frauds and scams has definitely been increasing over the last year or two. Fraudsters and scammers are really good at taking current events and current affairs and turning it to their advantage and trying to trick people essentially into moving money that they really shouldn’t be. For example, we saw a large increase in fraud and scams related to Covid.”
“There is no situation where the bank is going to call you and say ‘there’s something happening internally that means you need to move your money to another account’, it won’t happen.”
He added: “There’s no difference in terms of data security, data privacy or anything like that, between Revolut or a traditional financial institution.”
