Revolut launches AI-scam feature to break scammers "spell"

Scamming is on the rise- be it ID theft, romance scams or Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams, where criminals dupe users to transfer money to a fraudster-controlled account.

An example of the latter could be a scammer calling an individual pretending to be from a bank’s fraud team warning the individual that they need to move funds to a safe account, when in fact the individual will be sending money to an account controlled by the fraudster.

In total, scammers were responsible for nearly 1.4m cases of fraud in the UK during the first half of 2023, according to industry figures.

In light of the rise in scamming, challenger bank Revolut is launching tech which can break the scammer ‘“spell” to detect APP scams.

Revolut says its AI-scam feature, used on top of existing fraud detection tech, leverages “sophisticated” machine learning to detect if a customer is being scammed, breaking the "spell’ of the scammer before they send their money to the criminal.

The tech, built internally by Revolut’’s financial crime team, 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 sent a “scam intervention flow”, whereby the customer provides additional information about the transaction they were attempting, to see if they are being scammed.

The customer is 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 says it has seen a  30 per cent reduction in the fraud losses resulting from card scams where money has been sent for investment opportunities.

Across its UK customer base in 2023, Revolut found that 60 per cent of all of its reported UK scam cases originated from just three sources: Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp.

David Eborne, head of fraud, Revolut, said:

“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.”