Revolut, one of the world’s most promising technology startups, has been accused of failing to block thousands of potentially suspicious transactions on its platform, violating basic banking rules.

The Telegraph has revealed how the company switched off an automated system designed to stop dubious money transfers, meaning that thousands of illegal transfers may have passed through their banking system between July and September of last year.

Such screening systems are used to automatically check customer records against official lists identifying high-risk transactions and customers who are “politically exposed persons”.

An internal investigation was launched by Revolut in 2018 after a whistleblower connected the company’s board, with the company’s CFO Peter O’Higgins resigning from the company in January over the issue.

In a letter to the FCA in September 2018, Revolut’s head of legal Tom Hambrett wrote: “The investigation concluded that the original decision to turn off the transaction-halting mechanism was erroneous and implied a remediable systems and controls failing,” adding that the digital bank has since introduced a new system following the incident.

It is still unclear as to how this will affect Maltese clients of the digital bank, but the newsroom has received reports of non-functioning features like ‘Vaults’ and an unresponsive customer care

Even though users are notified of a maintenance scheduled for 4th March (between 1 and 1:30am), some are still worried with the recent slew of technical issues… especially in light of the latest updates from beyond our shores.

Revolut has since said they are “facing some technical issues which are affecting our app’s functionality.”

Lovin Malta has attempted to reach out to Dimitris Litsikakis, Revolut’s Country Manger for Malta, for a comment.

UPDATED AT 12:52: Some of the people who initially reported issues with their Vaults seem to have now regained access to this feature

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Julian Bonnici

Julian is the former editor of Lovin Malta and has a particular interest in politics, the environment, social issues, and human interest stories.