Revolut Ltd · DRN-6286209

The complaint Mr B complains that Revolut Ltd has unfairly declined to refund disputed transactions made from his account after he was the victim of a scam. What happened On 2 January 2026, shortly after opening an account with an online marketplace, he says he received an email to say he’d made a sale and needed to confirm his payment details in order to receive the funds. He says he clicked a link in the email and was redirected to what he believed was part of the marketplaces onboarding process. He says he entered his card details but was told he wouldn’t be charged, and that it was a ‘test payment.’ He was then prompted to approve a notification in his Revolut app, which he did. He says approximately €300 was debited from his account, which confused him as the page stated that no charge would occur. After this, the same webpage said his account didn’t meet a “minimum balance of approval” and instructed him to top up his Revolut balance to £300 for the verification to complete and for the funds to be released or returned. Mr B says he believed this was required to resolve the issue and recover the initial amount and followed these instructions and approved a further transaction. This resulted in additional money being taken. He says at no point did he believe he was making genuine purchases, but instead, believed he was completing a verification process and not approving money to leave his account. When Mr B discovered he’d been scammed, he and contacted Revolut to ask for the £798.77 (the total amount taken) to be refunded. But Revolut didn’t believe it was liable for his loss. Mr B raised a complaint, and in response, Revolut said: • The disputed transactions were authorised via 3DS authentication system, which involved Mr B having to approve the transactions via a push notification within his Revolut app. • Because of this, Revolut was unable to attempt to reclaim the amounts back via MasterCard’s chargeback rules. • It was sorry that Mr B was the victim of a scam, but it wouldn’t be refunding his loss. Mr B remained unhappy and referred his complaint to this service where it was considered by one of our investigators. He didn’t believe Revolut should refund the £787.77 to Mr B, in view of the push notifications that Mr B had approved, albeit under false pretences. Mr B disagreed with our investigator. As well as other things, he said Revolut did not prompt him to authorise all the disputed transactions in the app. He says only one payment was actively authorised. The remaining two were processed without his in-app approval, and he did not receive any 3DS verification or biometric prompts for those. He also said he was not acting as a free and independent agent, as he was under control of the fraudster, in a state of panic, confusion, and trusted that he was speaking to an official support channel.

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As no agreement could not be reached, the complaint has been passed to me to decide. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I realise this will come as a huge disappointment to Mr B, but I’ve reached the same conclusions as our investigator, for broadly the same reasons. I’ve explained why below. It’s accepted by all that Mr B fell victim to a scam. I was sorry to hear that this was the case. This can’t have been an easy time for him at all. I’d also like to say that Mr B has provided many comments in response to our investigator’s findings. I’ve read everything that he’s said, but when reaching this decision, I’ve focused on what I consider to be the most relevant information in the circumstances. No discourtesy in intended by this. The regulations relevant to this case, The Payment Service Regulations 2017 (PSRs) say that generally speaking, Mr B would be liable for authorised payments, and Revolut would generally be liable for unauthorised ones. So I’ve thought about this very carefully when reaching this decision. I’ve seen Revolut’s technical evidence. From this, I’m satisfied that all disputed transactions were correctly authenticated using Mr B’s card information, and whilst I appreciate Mr B says otherwise, I’m satisfied from Revolut’s technical evidence that stronger authentication was completed each time in his Revolut app. But authentication alone isn’t enough to consider a payment authorised. For this to be the case, the PSRs explain that Mr B must have given his consent to the execution of the payment transaction – and that consent must be in the form, and in accordance with the procedure, agreed between him and Revolut. In other words, consent happens when Mr B completes the steps agreed for making a payment. Someone else could also act on Mr B’s behalf to complete these agreed steps. And for the purposes of whether a payment is authorised, it doesn’t matter if Mr B was deceived about the purpose or the amount of the payment – which I accept is what happened here. For the form and procedure, I’ve reviewed the terms and conditions that Revolut has referred me to. These say that Mr B can consent to payments by using his Revolut card. Here, I accept Mr B didn’t use his card, the scammer did after obtaining this information via the counterfeit page that Mr B believed was part of the marketplaces onboarding process. I also accept that Mr B didn’t intend to give consent for the scammer to make any payments on his behalf.

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When considering whether it’s fair for Revolut to treat the three transactions as authorised, I’ve thought about the fact that Mr B did verify himself by logging into his Revolut app before approving the transactions via push notifications within the app. I appreciate this was under false pretences, as I accept that he was told the transactions were to verify his account and that no money would be taken. But, by approving these transactions in the way that he did, as far as Revolut was concerned, he consented to the payments. I’ve seen an example of the stronger authentication screen that I accept Mr B would’ve seen, and I find, on balance, that the screen would’ve been clear that the purpose of completing it was to approve a payment. And I’m satisfied that it would’ve displayed the name of the payee, the transaction amount, and the option to ‘confirm’ or ‘reject.’ I fully accept that Mr B wouldn’t have knowingly sent his money to a fraudster, and that he was under the belief that he was verifying his payment information in order to receive money from a sale he’d made, but sadly these scams are very convincing, and victims are often engineered to carry out certain tasks quickly without realising the consequences. However, as mentioned, it doesn’t matter if Mr B was deceived about the purpose or the amounts of the payments to consider them as authorised. Once the payments were authorised, Revolut wouldn’t have been able to stop them, despite them being in a ‘pending’ state. Revolut has said that these transactions wouldn’t be covered by the chargeback scheme, but this service considers raising a chargeback to be best practice if there is a reasonable chance of success. Here, the payments were made to genuine cryptocurrency selling platforms. And they would’ve most likely provided the service that was paid for, however to an individual other than Mr B. Whilst I acknowledge that Mr B believes this to be very unfair, I don’t think it’s likely that Revolut could’ve recovered the £798.77 for him by using the chargeback scheme. I’m aware that this will be very disappointing news to Mr B. And I’m sorry to hear of the impact this scam has had on him. But in the circumstances, I find Mr B authorised the disputed transactions, and so I don’t require Revolut to refund the £798.77 to him. My final decision My final decision is that I don’t uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr B to accept or reject my decision before 25 May 2026. Lorna Wall Ombudsman

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