Revolut, the UK’s leading fintech with more than 35 million customers worldwide, has today announced the launch of an advanced scam detection feature to help protect customers from card scams.

Revolut customers can now experience an added layer of security protection, on top of the technology already in place, to detect APP (Authorised Push Payment) scams, where criminals trick the user to get them to transfer money to another account.

Revolut’s new AI-scam feature uses sophisticated machine learning to detect if a customer is being scammed, and therefore break the ‘spell’ of the scammer before they send their money to the criminal. Built internally by Revolut’s financial crime team, the new feature can determine if there is a high likelihood that the customer is making a card payment as part of a scam, and if so, decline the payment. The customer is then protected from performing other similar payments and sent through a scam intervention flow in-app. During this phase the customer needs to provide additional information about the transaction they were attempting, with the goal of checking whether the customer is being guided by someone and is under the scammers ‘spell’. They are then also shown specific scam educational stories to prompt customers to think in-depth before they make the payment. Revolut can also redirect the customer into a chat with a Revolut fraud specialist who will then ask them further questions in order to determine if they are being scammed.

Since the launch of the card scam detection feature, Revolut has observed a 30% reduction in the fraud losses resulting from card scams where money has been sent for investment opportunities.

David Eborne, Head of Fraud at Revolut, said: "We’re very excited to be launching our new AI-scam feature which implements advanced technology to interrupt fraudsters taking advantage of everyday people. We’ve invested heavily in the product to ensure that customers can continue to spend and send their money safely. For example, a growing number of banks are increasingly restricting or heavily limiting the ability to make card payments to crypto and investment websites. With this advanced feature, rather than completely block those transactions, we ensure that customers who want to perform legitimate payments continue to do so, but also intervene to protect those who are being guided by criminals to make fraudulent ones. We are giving our customers both freedom and security at the same time”.

Across its UK customer base in 2023, Revolut found that 60% of all of its reported UK scam cases originated from just three sources: Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Additionally, 33% of the total value of all money lost to scams began on Meta platforms across the same period. The use of Meta platforms as the primary originator of scams is only increasing, rising from 52% of all reported cases in the UK in the first half of the year, to 66% in the six months to the end of December 2023

The new AI card scam feature is live in the Revolut app and available to customers worldwide.

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