More than 100 customers contact the BBC about fraud

“I never thought I would be a victim of fraud,” says Dr. Ravi Kumar.

“But here I am, a 53-year-old NHS consultant in intensive care and anesthesia, deeply affected.”

He lost £39,000 in May when scammers tricked him into transferring money to his Revolut account and giving them access to it.

He had saved the money for his teenagers.

“I was very depressed,” he adds. “My children are too young to share this grief with them.”

Dr. Kumar is one of more than 100 people who told the BBC that they felt badly treated by Revolut after being defrauded, following a Panorama investigation into the e-money company.

For him, the deception began when he received a call from someone claiming to be from American Express, his credit card company. They informed him that fraudulent activity had been detected on his account.

They said they would report this to the industry regulator and that he should expect another call from Barclays, his main bank, as the money in that account could also be at risk.

A few hours later he received a call from someone who said he was from Barclays.

They told him to transfer his savings to his Revolut account for safekeeping during repairs.

He didn’t. At this point, Dr. Kumar suspicious.

He wanted the person on the end of the line to prove who he was.

He was given a number to call – and when he did, he heard the familiar welcome message from Barclays, which reassured him.

But it was still the scammer on the phone.

They again asked him to transfer his money to Revolut for security reasons – and this time Dr. Kumar too.

After the transfer, the fraudster asked him to create two virtual debit cards in the app for “testing purposes” and asked him to delete the app for security reasons.

Little did he know that this could allow them to spend thousands of pounds from his account – without him receiving any notification.

The next morning, Dr. Kumar ran the Revolut app on his phone again and found that £39,000 had been debited from his account.

The 25 transactions made included purchases of luxury fashion and technology items from companies including Selfridges, Apple and Currys.

He contacted Revolut to complain, but they told him in a letter seen by the BBC that he would not receive a refund because he had ultimately allowed the fraudsters to use the virtual debit cards.

Dr. Kumar has hired lawyers to file his complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which handles complaints between consumers and financial companies.

“I don’t know how long I can pay for legal aid,” he says. “We canceled two holidays, and I’ve been working almost every Saturday since then.”

He added: “What is even more disheartening than the financial loss is the indifference and lack of responsibility shown by Revolut.”

The electronic money company, Founded in 2015 by two former bankershas nine million customers in the UK and announced record annual profits of £438 million last year.

Revolut has also been named in more fraud reports than any other major UK bank. This is according to figures collected last year by Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting center for fraud and cybercrime.

In the case of Dr. For Kumar, the Revolut feature that allowed fraudsters to spend his money was to create virtual debit cards.

These work just like a physical debit card, but only exist in the digital world.

You can provide customers with greater security by allowing you to make online purchases without providing your primary card details.

It joins a list of features that some of Revolut’s competitors don’t offer.

Others include the ability to hold money in different currencies, transfer it abroad, buy individual stocks, invest in commodities and access cryptocurrencies.

This feature set gives Revolut broad appeal – it describes itself as an “all-in-one financial app for your money” – but it could also be a weakness, cybersecurity experts warn.

“It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket,” says Prof. Mark Button, who studies cybercrime.

“If you have a product that can be linked to all different aspects of your financial life and you are put at risk by a scam or scam, then that is extremely dangerous.”

Although Revolut offers many features, it lacks an emergency number that you can call to lock your account. You have to ask them using their app’s chat feature.

A dedicated phone number could have helped Lynne Elms stop fraudsters trying to take £160,000 from her employer in seven minutes.

She was working at her best friend’s cosmetics company in November 2022 when a scammer claiming to be from Revolut told her that the company’s account was under attack by scammers.

They said it was an emergency and she needed to withdraw the money from the account as quickly as possible or risk losing it.

They convinced the 52-year-old to install a remote desktop application that they claimed could be used to protect the account. This allowed them to actually take control of their computer.

Within seven minutes, the fraudsters pressured Lynne into approving four transfers worth £160,000.

The accounts she was supposed to transfer the money to had names like “Refund,” “Invoice,” and “Cancel.”

That meant she saw those words in the notifications sent to her phone asking her to approve the transfers.

“Revolut was absolutely useless. It took me about three to four hours to get in touch with anyone,” says Lynne.

“Eventually Revolut froze the account. They told me there was nothing they could do. It felt like a one-liner to apologize.”

Her employer spent £70,000 on legal fees to get the money back.

An FOS investigator has recommended that Revolut reimburse them at least £115,000, although Revolut disputes the sum. A final decision from the Ombudsman is expected shortly.

Revolut told us they couldn’t comment on cases still pending with the FOS, but said they were “sorry to hear of any case where our customers are being targeted by ruthless and sophisticated criminals”.

Revolut addressed the fact that more than 100 people have contacted the BBC to complain about the company, saying such issues should be addressed through their app.

They add that last year it reduced the number of fraudulent transactions on its service by 20% and prevented potential fraud losses worth £475 million.

For victims who have lost money to scams on Revolut, the impact goes beyond financial stress.

“It felt like I was losing my business and my best friend,” Lynne says. “It was the worst time of my life. I never thought I’d get over it. I don’t think I did.”