I have been a long term advocate of Revolut since 2018 - I have found it very useful whilst we transitioned from UK to France.
I have moved to using Revolut for my day to day banking as is seemed so much more modern that our Credit Agricole account and their savings rates were very good also.
I have told many people of the advantages of Revolut.
BUT…….
I received an email on Sunday 26th April stating that my account would be closed on June 27th and that my card had been suspended - I was instructed to transfer any money I had to an alternate bank. I was not aware of any issues with my account and had provided plenty of details of ID and proof of funds when requested historically.
At the time I was overseas but thankfully I had a credit card with me.
I had the option to appeal the decision of closure which I did. The appeal process takes a week and during this time you cannot use your card. Exactly 1 week later to the minute the appeal was complete and rejected which makes me think to it was not even considered.
Revolut refuse to tell me why my account has been closed.
So just a cautionary note - I have now moved to an alternate “bank”.
And you’ve absolutely no idea why? I’m not attempting to blame the victim nor dig for dirt etc, just genuinely intrigued. I get the impression it’s quite easy to transgress and unknowling break one of their regs, and they are quick and strict in enforcement.
I too have a Revolut account, in which I keep a small sum, but only ever use it as a backup ‘just in case’. I can’t bring myself to move over entirely. Not sure why really. A fear of the sort of thing that has happened to you. I read such stories and am aware, they linger.
I actually bank with Bourso but recently opened an account with LCL because they had an actual bricks and mortar agency in the town I’ve just moved too. I thought it might be useful to be able to speak to an actual person face to face if needs be. And I like that. Turns out to have been a mistake and I closed the account a couple of months later. I ended up having to speak to the lovely lady advisor far too often. She really was lovely, and sorted stuff out, but LCL themselves were so restrictive and I was running into hurdles at seemingly every turn. Stuff I just took for granted with Bourso. So with them, I’m staying.
Indeed. And from the stories I’ve read (on reddit mainly) it seems people do innocently do something they think is normal but Revolut classes as an infringement. And, as I say, they are strict and come down quickly.
Just turfing people off without explaining why or giving a fair chance at an appeal is a bit crap though.
Just going through something similar with AliExpress who have banned me from the platform (well, any attempt to buy anything is immediately refunded - quite a passive agressive way of doing it). I have now worked out what I “did” which was not not return something that hadn’t been sent to me in the first place (the vendor marked it as shipped when it wasn’t, then attached false tracking ID) - no explanation, an invitation to “appeal” without any hint what one is appealing. I managed to get it reopened and at least this appeal has not just been closed against me, but clearly they are not rushing to figure out what happened.
At least with Aliexpress it’s easy to open a 2nd account. Though I’m not that keen to buy anything from them at the moment. Once bitten etc.
Their duty is to send an SAR to the NCA and then wait for the answer. They are expressly forbidden to say anything to the customer under the legislation. There’s generally a pretty good investigation done by the bank before sending the SAR but these days obviously a lot of it is automated by machine learning, which pulls together the required information and formats it into the required form for a SAR. I actually invested a little bit into a fintech that automates the SAR process some time ago, it was very smart, it ended up being bought by Visa I seem to recall. But the fear with a business as big as Revolut with as few staff as Revolut is of course that (too) much of the process is automated and they end up sending things that humans would realise are not needed.
Following the recent death of my brother I did receive a relatively small (approx £300) payment from Nationwide as part of them closing his bank account through their bereavement service (I am the Executor of the Will). This payment was held up by Revolut - I was asked to provide proof of the source of these funds, I duly sent in an appropriate letter from the solicitor and a copy of the will, The payment was then returned to Nationwide as rejected by Revolut.
This payment has since been sent to another account with a different bank without any issue.
I wonder looking back if this is what caused the problems or if this was after something had already been triggered.
If this has caused the problems it would be damned frustrating as it (and everything else) is completely above board.
Isn’t there something called National Hunter database? Apparently you really, really do not want to end up on that.
The problem is, if the financial provider’s practices are imperfect, or the newly fashionable favourite is suddenly for them to start using algorithms they themselves don’t understand to flag transactions or people as suspicious… they can hide behind finance industry regulations and refuse to tell you what they’ve accused you of or why.
It’s very poor.
Even worse, in the UK you can complain to the FOS (Ombudsman) and sometimes to regulator. But the financial institution can say things to them in private about you that you are not allowed to know they’ve said. So you can lose at the FOS and still not know why or what you’ve been accused of. And if the institution’s idiocy ,(not rare) or poor practices is at fault then you can be hung for something not true.
It’s literally blanket terms of protection that let them get away with thia e.g. if they say they need to keep the secrecy of their fraud detection algorithms so they won’t tell you (but they are allowed to whisper to the FOS) what triggered it. Then they say they don’t want fraudsters to know anything of their methods or the knowledge will be used for further frauds.
Basically someone in this situation is declared guilty without trial, or knowing what they are accused of. (And the FOS is not that hot mostly IMV). It’s disgusting and should be stopped.
Mat, have you considered using the GDPR Subject Access Request route (another SAR!) to try and flush out what transaction or information Revolut may be basing their decision on? They will no doubt redact much of the data they hold on you, but it might - possibly - give you an idea, or a hint of the problem. They have up to a month to respond, and of course there is no cost to you.