The BBC has found that Revolut was named in more reports of fraud in the last financial year than any of the major High Street banks.
The firm, which received a provisional UK banking licence in July, was at the centre of nearly 10,000 complaints to the UK’s leading reporter for fraud and cybercrime, Action Fraud, according to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made by BBC Panorama.
Revolut was comfortably ahead of second-place Barclays, which was named in almost 8,000 filings despite having about double Revolut’s customer numbers in the UK. Rivals Monzo and Starling were named in almost 5,000 and just over 1,000 reports respectively.
The BBC's investigation cites one customer who had £165,000 drained from his Revolut business account in a matter of minutes by fraudsters who bypassed fraud controls.
When he realised he was being scammed, the customers found but there was no dedicated helpline, just a chat function deep within the app.
"I messaged them saying, ‘I’ve been scammed, please freeze my account,’” he told the BBC.
It took 23 minutes to reach the right department that could freeze the account, during which time another £67,000 had been taken.
He believes criminals managed to bypass facial-recognition software to gain access to his account on their device. If an account is set up on a new device, Revolut asks for a selfie, which the customers says he did not provide.
The client has taken his case to the Banking Ombudsman after Revolut refused to reimburse him for the losses.
Inna Lyubashevskaya, chief customer officer at KYC firm Sumsub, says that in Revolut's quest for growth "it’s obvious that corners were cut".
He says visual identity and liveness needs to be cross-checked with the original registration photo to validate the user, and more stringent transaction monitoring should spot such suspicious payment patterns.
"This is on top of the poor customer service via a slow-to-respond chat function - leading to further losses.
"Failing to upgrade your anti-fraud solutions while bad actors are supercharging their arsenal with AI is baffling. Here, there is no ‘magic tool’ that can solve all fraud; however, implementing AI-powered multi-layered protection at all stages of the user journey will undoubtedly help to eliminate threats."
Consumer campaigning group Which? does not recommend banking large sums of money with the firm.
Rob Lilley-Jones, who represented Which? for the Panorama broadcast, says: “They have a track record of not reimbursing people who fall victim to fraud or find themselves in this incredibly difficult situation, [and] of money being taken from accounts even after scam activity has been reported.”
Rveolut told the BBC it takes fraud incredibly seriously and that it has “robust controls” to meet its legal and regulatory obligations.