The UK's Financial Ombudsman has fielded a 35% surge in customer complaints about requests for reimbursement over scam thefts being denied by Revolut.
The data, unearthed by Bloomberg, reveals that in nearly half of all cases reviewed and closed last year, the ombudsman ordered Revolut to reimburse customers for their losses.
However, separate data from law firms representing the fintech’s customers indicate that Revolut has continued to deny these claims.
The news comes ahead of new rules by the Payment Systems Regulator which come into force by October, under which payments services providers in the UK must reimburse consumers who have fallen victim to an authorised push payment scams when using Faster Payments. The reimbursement, up to a value of £415,000, will be split 50:50 between sending and receiving PSPs.
This has caused alarm among the neobanking community over a potentially costly hit to their bottom lines and led to an intense lobbying effort to push the maximum value down to £30,000 and to impose a 'tech levy' on social media firms where many such crimes originate.
Alongside Revolut travails, Monzo and Starling were found to be among the lowest scoring firms for reimbursing victims of authorised push payment fraud, according to 2022 data published by the Payment Systems Regulator.
The two challenger banks, which pride themselves on their customer service operations, were found wanting when compared to their larger rivals in reimbursing customers who were tricked by fraudsters into making payments to accounts outside of their control.