Revolut Ltd · DRN-5911033

Complaint Ms M is unhappy that Revolut Ltd didn’t reimburse her after she reported falling victim to a scam. Background In 2025, Ms M was the victim of a job scam. She contacted someone on a messaging app about a job opportunity but was told the role had already been filled. Instead, she was offered the chance to earn money by completing online tasks, and she was told she would receive commission for doing so. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a genuine job opportunity. The people she’d contacted were fraudsters. The fraudsters told her she needed to pay money upfront to “fund” her account before she could earn anything. Believing this was a genuine requirement, she transferred the funds. On 12 and 13 April 2025, Ms M made several push‑to‑card payments to different recipients, totalling just over £2,500. A push‑to‑card payment allows someone to send money directly to another person’s debit, credit, or prepaid card, rather than their bank account. When Ms M realised she had been scammed, she reported it to Revolut. Revolut declined to refund her. Ms M was unhappy with that outcome and brought her complaint to this service. An Investigator reviewed the case and didn’t uphold it. Ms M disagreed with that view, so the complaint has now been passed to me to make a final decision. Findings I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. In general, the starting point in law is that a firm must process payments that a customer authorises, in line with the Payment Services Regulations (here, the 2017 Regulations) and the terms and conditions of the account. However, that isn’t the full picture. In certain circumstances, Revolut is expected to reimburse customers who have fallen victim to authorised push payment (APP) scams under the Faster Payment Services and CHAPS Reimbursement Rules. Unfortunately, as these were “push-to-card” payments they’re not covered by those rules. Nevertheless, good industry practice required a firm like Revolut to be alert to activity that appears unusual or out of character, particularly where it could indicate a risk of fraud. If a payment does present a meaningful risk, the firm should take reasonable steps to warn the customer before they proceed. The level of intervention (whether a simple warning or something more) should be proportionate to the risk, balancing customer protection with the need to avoid unnecessary disruption. Revolut was in a challenging position when it came to identifying a fraud risk in this case. There hadn’t been much activity on Ms M’s account in the past, meaning Revolut had little information to compare her transactions against. In any case, I’m not persuaded that the individual payment values here were high enough to justify a person‑led intervention – i.e. I wouldn’t have expected Revolut to pause any of these payments and contact Ms M directly to discuss the wider circumstances. The largest single payment was around £370. While these were significant sums for Ms M, it wouldn’t be realistic to expect a firm to manually intervene for payments of this size.

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It might have been reasonable for Revolut to provide a system-generated written warning in relation to one of the later payments, given that Ms M made many transactions on the final day and several in quick succession. I understand that Revolut did issue some written warnings during this period. Ms M feels these were inadequate, but the messages she received from the fraudsters show they were instructing her on which options to select to avoid seeing or being influenced by any warnings. The fraudsters clearly anticipated that a well‑worded warning could alert her to the scam, so they guided her through the process to prevent that. Given all of this, it is difficult to see what more Revolut could reasonably have done to protect her. Any attempt to question or challenge the payments would likely not have been met with full and honest information, because Ms M was acting under the direction of the scammers and believed they were helping her secure income from a legitimate work opportunity. That belief, while understandable, meant that any protective steps taken by Revolut were unlikely to succeed. None of this is intended to minimise the fact that Ms M was the victim of a deliberate and manipulative scam. I have considerable sympathy for her and the situation she now faces. However, my role is to assess Revolut’s actions. I’m not persuaded that it acted incorrectly. And even if I were to find shortcomings, I’m not persuaded that any additional step Revolut might reasonably have taken would have prevented Ms M’s loss. Final decision For the reasons I’ve explained above, I don’t uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Ms M to accept or reject my decision before 15 April 2026. James Kimmitt Ombudsman

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