Revolut Introduces Fraud Protection for Crypto Customers

Revolut will reportedly offer new anti-fraud security measures to its cryptocurrency customers starting next year.

“In the crypto space, there’s a little bit of an issue with fraud outcomes,” Alex Codina, general manager for merchant payments at Revolut, told CoinDesk Tuesday (Dec. 17).

“Now, crypto firms, either exchanges or on-rampers, can integrate Revolut Pay as a payment method and by doing that we allow our users to directly buy crypto on those checkouts in a safer manner.”

For now, the report notes, the British FinTech says there is limited visibility into transactions and transfers its crypto customers make with exchanges, which could make them more susceptible to fraud, as card mechanisms have limited anti-scam protections.

According to CoinDesk, a year-long pilot of companies using Revolut Pay’s protections showed crypto customers were subjected to roughly 50% fewer fraud attempts.

Among these protections are know-your-customer (KYC) name matching, fraud warning screens, proof of crypto delivery and the ability for crypto merchants to get transaction risk scores, the report added.

Revolut’s efforts come at a time when crypto scams and thefts are ballooning, jumping 53% last year by one estimate. As PYMNTS wrote late this summer, it has caused law enforcement to “sharpened its focus on the historically opaque sector — a space where criminal ingenuity often outpaces regulatory efforts.”

Crypto-related convictions jumped an astonishing 267% last year, with law enforcement taking creative measures to catch scammers.

For example, the FBI recently charged 18 individuals following a sting in which the bureau created its own crypto asset, dubbed “NexfundAI,” and then tracked its usage to prove malfeasance and manipulation.

“Instead of flipping the coin for profit, the criminals found themselves at the other end of sealed indictments,” PYMNTS wrote.

Also this year, the FBI revealed that cryptocurrency-related complaints accounted for 10% of all financial fraud complaints last year, but 50% of the total losses, mainly because of the use of crypto in investment scams that see victims accumulating “massive debt” to cover their losses.

In all, losses to financial fraud involving the use of cryptocurrency climbed 45% in 2023, to $5.6 billion, with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) getting 69,468 complaints from the public involving the use of crypto.

“The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, the speed of irreversible transactions, and the ability to transfer value around the world make cryptocurrency an attractive vehicle for criminals, while creating challenges to recover stolen funds,” Michael D. Nordwall, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, wrote in the bureau’s annual report on crypto crime.

“Once an individual sends a payment, the recipient owns the cryptocurrency and often quickly transfers it into an account overseas for cash out purposes.”