Police assessing Revolut over money transfer complaint

Revolut is facing a police probe over a money transfer, adding to the fast-growing fintech firm’s woes after a series of controversies.

The City of London Police are assessing a complaint after a Revolut customer claimed that £70,000 was incorrectly paid into another person’s account.

While the City of London Police’s Action Fraud reporting centre does not itself have investigative powers, it is understood the Metropolitan Police have also already opened an investigation after they received a complaint about Revolut, according to the Financial Times.

The Metropolitan Police declined to confirm the investigation.

In a statement to the Press Association, a Revolut spokesman stressed that there is no fraud investigation being undertaken by the police concerning the company.

He said: “To be clear, this is not a fraud case. There is no investigation into fraud at Revolut.

“One of our customers registered a complaint after funds did not reach their account because incorrect details were entered during the payment stage.

“Our team have proactively engaged with both the customer and our payments partners to resolve the case and to ensure that the funds were located.

“We understand that the customer escalated his dissatisfaction to the police authorities by submitting a non-fraud complaint via the action fraud portal – this organisation has no police investigatory powers.

“We would also like to make it abundantly clear that there is no fraud investigation underway, and we have not been notified of any other investigation by the police.”

Revolut, which is worth 1.7 billion US dollars (£1.3 billion), has grown rapidly since it launched four years ago offering bank cards and free foreign exchange transfers, but has courted its fair share of controversy.

Last week, Revolut lost its finance chief Peter O’Higgins as the company faces accusations it broke banking rules by switching off an automatic system that stops suspicious money transactions on its platform for three months last year.

The bank’s hiring and corporate culture has also come under fire after Wired magazine reported that the company asked job applicants to work for free and demanded staff work long hours, including the weekends.

In response, Revolut’s boss and co-founder Nikolay Storonsky penned an open letter admitting that he and the firm “haven’t always gotten things right”, arguing that “we are not the same company that we were 12-18 months ago, when these mistakes were made”.

“Like everyone else at Revolut, I am constantly learning and growing with the company. I now know that there is much more to running a successful business than simply hitting targets”, Mr Storonksy wrote.

Revolut also made headlines recently after its “single-shaming” advertising campaign was referred to the Financial Conduct Authority.

Meanwhile, Revolut has been forced to deny that it has links to the Kremlin following accusations by a Lithuanian politician that Mr Storonsky is interfering in the country’s politics.