AFAIU, in the UK, cashback type transactions are only taxable if done by a business in the course of that business. For ordinary customers, they are not taxable. Not sure if France is the same.
Regarding the original topic, the safety of money entrusted to a fintech, I’ve just checked up on Wise, and although they are not covered by a Government compensation scheme, they do say they “safeguard” clients’ money by holding it separately from their own working capital, and in cash or easily accessible liquid assets.
They also don’t lend clients’ money out to anybody (unlike banks) so are not vulnerable in that regard.
They are regulated by the National Bank of Belgium in the EU, and FCA in the UK.
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Banks don’t actually lend depositor’s money either these days.
Page 18.
That’s a different sort of “safe” though - that simply safeguards client money in the event that Wise ceases trading, it doesn’t demonstrate that Wise won’t allow a scammer to transfer ever increasing amounts in a 5 minute window until your account is empty.
There’s no guarantee that a bank won’t do that either surely?
True.
That exactly matches my thinking on why I may invest more in future in our existing assurance vie policy with Nalo, a fintech investment management firm, ie over and above guaranteed deposit limits. They explicitly don’t lend to anyone, and under financial regulations, keep clients funds entirely separate from their own working capital. They also only invest in ETFs (ie index funds). We also have an assurance vie with Credit Agricole’s asset management arm, but they do lend money to third parties, so client funds may be (hopefully only theoretically) at risk. That was a major factor in our investing in a non bank, albeit a fintech…
I was astounded to receive a call from someone purporting to be from Credit Agricole… asking if I had been on the bank online site at xyz that day…
I immediately suspected some scam… but, no.
I’ve been using OH’s chromebook as my computer is busted and had much trouble with forgotten passwords… which had alerted someone in the CA banking system that there was much unusual stuff going on.
I was phoned on my mobile (number lodged with my bank) and he told me of their worries… he was OK with the fact that this mad woman was not actually a fraudster… 
and I was glad there is someone watching out for the customers…
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One would hope that governments would be ready to step in if a large fintech did for some reason get into difficulties, as they have done with banks and building societies in the past (e.g. Northern Rock and RBS)?
Only when it risked the stability of the whole banking system.
Best we all bury our doubloons and pieces of eight under the spot marked X on the map, then. 
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There are some changes coming in UK regs.
I’m not sure these will help with banks like Revolut, based outside the UK.
Looks like sensible new rules.
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Hi John,
Thanks for posting that article, sorry for arriving late to the thread - was on a call to HMRC 
Reading it first made me wonder if this was a scam operated on Revolut? Some stuff didn’t seem to add up, some points already made in this thread.
I’ve researched around and found comments on the article made on a forum - amazingly, we also now (seem to) have the scammed person posting on that forum thread - they wrote
“Hi all, The story was written about me and I am happy to answer any questions.”
It seems there is a happy ending …
“I want to add that I have now received the money back from the merchant so I have no reason to lie about giving away my card details or anything.”
First here was some of the things in the article I was wondering about…
I presume this was an Irish times article - does anyone know if they did any fact checking themselves or just accepted the couples story?
“I received a message saying they needed my delivery details to be [updated]”
Was this a scam - did they check? At the end of the piece they do say “if I can track someone down who has received the same scam text message”. So presumably they checked with the delivery company?
But again, why can’t we get a screenshot of the message - and the link?
“The money … was in her partner’s account and was earmarked for their wedding next October.”
Why was it not kept in a savings account - the obvious place, even in the revolut euro account ? it only takes a couple of seconds to transfer - why not get the interest?
And the money was in the partners account but it was her delivery details updated?
“the transactions appeared to have been carried out in person by someone who had access to their Apple Pay details”
It does seem a virtual debit card be put on a different iPhone. My understanding is that it would require a one time code. So how could it be put on another phone without a code, unless many attempts to guess a code.
PS I’ve just looked at the revolut virtual card on my phone - under card information it only shows 4 digits of the card, and 4 digits of a device account number (which is not my account number) - and it says ‘apple pay uses the device account number instead of providing your credit or debit card number. This number can only be used with this phone.
How could the card details be revealed when you can’t even see them in the phone?
revolut said “our understanding is that the customer provided details that allowed a third party to add a card into an Apple Pay wallet which carried out the disputed transactions. Our view is that the customer could have done more to protect those sensitive details.”
The final part is “I don’t know how we can prove a one-time password was never shared” but also “We then said that we weren’t aware of any codes or card details shared but that it must have happened somehow.”
Revolut however will surely have a record of OTP’s issued. Perhaps they know things about this case and aren’t saying (which of course they wouldn’t).
There is a scam operating though - I found this in an article (you might have seen this?):
Using a spoofed phone number that looks like it is from the e-money institution, scammers are convincing customers to hand over a One Time Passcode (OTP) to register devices with Apple Pay, before downloading the cards on to their own phones.
The fraudsters then go on shopping sprees costing thousands in high-end stores, draining the victim’s bank account.
And Revolut has been heavily criticised for its customer service, as victims complain that its live chat sent them around in circles - with one saying that the challenger bank blames its customers.
Here’s the link for the article - it has some good prevention tips, and further info on revolut cases
Here’s the link to the forum - some thoughtful comments here too -
Including perhaps uncharitably but possibly accurately -
“The article was bizarre and unbalanced in my view. It danced around the salient issue. The implication seems to be that the ‘victims’ in some way disclosed their details. If that’s the case, it’s their fault.”
And -
“I am sure Revolut can been challenging to deal with when something goes wrong - but I do think there may be bias in the article. Either way, I have no idea who is right or wrong and I do hope Conor Pope has seen the communication between Revolut and the customers before going to print and not relied on verbal explanation only.”
As mentioned the scammed person is also posting on that forum thread.
I use Revolut, but on low balances, my main accounts are with a big french bank. Revolut is easy, the app is well made. It’s great to be able to see live tnransactions and the foreign exchange costs are brilliant. I have a premium account.
However I did run into problems once when I transferred some money from GBP to EUR a couple of years back. They suspected some kind of money laundering fraud as I was transferring small amounts regularly. They froze my account and it was a nightmare to get it reopened.
I couldn’t get any real person to talk to. In the end I complained on Revolut’s twitter account, and finally was contacted by a real person. It was quite a stressful few weeks.
I still use Revolut, but I am reassured to be able to speak to my account adviser at my bricks and mortar bank.
Note that I think Revolut now has a french banking license (french IBAN etc…) so your money will be protected under the deposits scheme. This obviously doesn’t cover fraud, only insolvency.
Actually that was the third article Pope had written having a go at Revolut. He may have a bee in his bonnet about them. but he’s generally reliable and the IT conservative about pointing fingers. They came back looking for new info from my wife which we didn’t feel inclined to give them so she dumped them, and I’ll dump them too, when I get around to it.
I’m happy with Bank of Ireland, AIB, HSBC and now CCF (ex HSBC in France). I’ve been with all of them for decades and I pay either no or minimal charges and they are all guaranteed. When I transfer cash or travel outside the Euro/Sterling zones I use Wise, one top up at a time
I discovered that Askaboutmoney website a few months ago and it seemed interesting, though I haven’t explored it. The guy who runs it struck me as a bit arrogant for some reason I can’t remember. As for the long debate on the Revolut scam, I think the contributors need to get a life 
I don’t accept financial institutions washing their hands even if someone makes a mistake, which is why I thought the legislation @Ancient_Mariner linked to look interesting. Let the fecking banks who are making vast profits invest in fraud protection and figure it all out and not dump on the poor old vulnerable punters. 
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Anyone ever use Fin.do ?
I did recently and satisfied.
But as I didn’t know much about them, I did worry about security
Doubloons … aka double ones. I have a savings scheme for these. As I vary rarely use cash and as double ones [€2 coins] appear surprisingly infrequently, the savings account is not growing apace.
I was given this sock bank many years ago, whilst living in UK. I put £1 coins in it. The rule, which I stuck to religiously, was that I would not ‘draw down’ the account until a £1 coin would not fit thru’ the slot. The sock was double its original length and bulging.
Come the day and a oncer wouldn’t go in. On counting the contents I found it was exactly £200! So this joke by the person who gave me the sock turned out to have its serious side.
Another joke which turned out profitably was based on the word ‘beans’.
The great Captain Beefheart was joking around with words with Rockette Morton, the bass player of The Magic Band.
The Captain - “What do you run on, Rockette Morton? [soto voce, say ‘beans’]”
Rockette Morton - “Beans!”
The Captain - “Laser beans!” [laughs]
Me and a pal set up a competition with the lads living next door that if instructed to say “Beans” the next thing that person had to say was “Beans”, whatever the circumstances. Failing to say “Beans” scored a penalty point.
First side to get 20 points bought a bottle of cognac for the winners.
My pal was with one of the competion at the counter of a bank. When the teller asked our man “How can I help you?” my pal whispered, "Say, ‘Beans’ ".
As the victim was ex Head Boy of Rugby and an Oxford BA/MA he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘Beans’, so got a penalty point.
A propos this thread, we also caught them out with “Say beans … account”
Our side beat the Oxbridge mob next door and they dutifully bought us a bottle of cognac.