Revolut sends money to wrong person with same name

This is a worrying story. It’s written by Conor Pope and appeared in The Irish Times on Monday. 

It becomes ever more worrying how large organisations treat the public.

Is Conor Pope correct in saying the ‘Other Johnny S’ is the big winner; is he really in the long-run? What might the morality of this story be? Should he not have returned the money to Revolut?

Did you know that Revolut might actively help you to send money to a random person who you’ve never met and never had any interactions with and whose number you don’t have stored in your phone – just because they happen to share a name with someone you actually do know?

And did you know that if such a thing were to happen to you, you might never see that cash again unless the random stranger who Revolut suggested you send the money to agrees to give it back?

It was certainly news to us, and we’d still be in the dark about such a possibility were it not for a reader called Elaine.

Late last month, Elaine sent a Revolut payment to cover her portion of a restaurant meal with a friend, and was less than pleased when it ended up in the hands of a completely different person.

She had what can only be described as frustrating interactions over and back with the digital banking company, which ended when Revolut told her there was absolutely nothing it could do to get her money back.

“I was sending €120 in settlement to a person sitting across from me at a table in a restaurant on May 22nd,” Elaine writes.

She and her husband ate with a third person, a man. We probably don’t need to tell you therefore that the third person was known to her, right? For the sake of completeness, we will make that clear.

This man was saved in her contacts by his name – and for the sake of this article we will call him Johnny S, although that is not actually his name.

“Before sending, I told him I’d text the word ‘Revolut’ to his number to be sure it was his, in case he might have changed it since I was in touch,” Elaine writes.

“He confirmed verbally that it was his number and I also got the blue tick marks to show he read it. After this I sent him €120,” she continues.

She and her husband left the restaurant and thought no more about it – at least until she heard back from Johnny S a couple of days later.

He texted Elaine “to say he never got the money”.

So where had it gone?

Suggested name

Elaine did some digging, and quickly established that when she had gone into Revolut and started typing Johnny’s name into the search space to find him as a contact, “Revolut suggested their own Johnny S, not mine. In fact, my safe and ‘saved’ Johnny S didn’t even appear in the screen; the only Johnny S that appeared in the search bar was ‘their’ Johnny S – a random person of that name who I don’t know and have never met,” Elaine says.

She recalls that when she started typing in the name “Johnny”, the first name she was prompted with was another contact whose name started with the same letter. “Seeing that I knew that he was from my saved contacts, I had no reason to think that the Johnny S that then appeared was not from my saved list and he was the only Johnny S that was prompted,” she continues.

‘No red flags’

Elaine stresses – and this is probably important – that at no point was she given the choice of sending the cash to two Johnny Ss – the right one and the wrong one.

“There were no red flags, and only one name appeared suggested by Revolut. No numbers showed up at all. Just names,” she says.

After finding out that the money had gone Awol, Elaine asked among her various WhatsApp groups about saved contacts being effectively ignored or not prompted by Revolut and random people with the same name coming up instead.

“They have all told me that you cannot send money by Revolut to random Revolut account-holders who are not in your saved contacts. One software engineer I know said he has had to save people in his contacts first in order to send them money,” she writes.

She says her experience, “one that is completely verified by my screenshots, shows that this is actually not the case. Revolut’s algorithm can and does ‘leapfrog’ random Revolut account-holders with the same name ‘over’ your saved contacts.”

Obviously when she found out the cash had gone to the wrong Johnny S despite her best efforts, she contacted Revolut. She sent us some screenshots of the correspondence she received from its representatives and chatbots.

“I completely understand how frustrating this must be, sending €120 to the wrong person,” she was told in one instance. The message from Revolut said this would be especially concerning as she had “trusted the suggested names in the app”. She was told her concern “is absolutely valid and I want to make sure we handle this properly”.

Another message told her “suggested recipients can include Revolut friends, past recipients and people matched through details linked to a Revolut account such as a phone number, email or Revtag, so yes, two very similar Johnnies can appear separately even if only one is in your contacts”.

A third message accepted that she had done “what any reasonable person would do. You checked your contact number, texted him to confirm and then sent the money through the app. The fact that your saved contact didn’t appear and someone else’s did is a legitimate concern and I’ve noted your feedback, and your experience with us is truly important and we will do everything possible for our end to improve it.”

Another message said it was possible for a suggestion to appear even if she never added the name and number to her contacts list, but it added that the sender “can’t verify from here why that profile was ranked above your saved contact or why it appeared first in the suggestion”.

The communication continued.

“I know how incredibly frustrating this entire situation is,” another bot said.

“When my colleague mentioned that your experience was a ‘legitimate concern’, they were referring to your feedback about how the app’s contact search displayed the names. We take that feedback very seriously and I’ve passed it on to help improve the app’s design so this doesn’t happen to others; however, that doesn’t change the regulatory rules around the transfer itself.”

The upshot was that without the other Johnny’s consent – the wrong Johnny S – Revolut couldn’t get the money back, and it said it was not in a position to issue a refund directly.

“Since the recipient did not agree to return the funds during the six-day time-frame, we have sadly exhausted all the options available to us as a bank,” the concluding message said.

“I know this isn’t the outcome you were hoping [for],” it added, saying that her “best next step to try and recover the funds is to file a report with An Garda Síochána or to proceed with a formal complaint”.

Revolut bots

By the time Elaine had decided to contact us, she had given up on a refund.

“They have a six-day wait to see if the incorrect recipient returns the money. But they do nothing really. The person hasn’t returned the money. Revolut bots do most of the communication, then it is handed over to a person (I dealt with five as I had to keep following up). They seem to work off what appears to me to be a script. I explained they ignored my safe, saved contacts and suggested an unknown Revolut account-holder, and this was shocking to me and it just shouldn’t be that easy.”

We can only agree.

We contacted Revolut and asked about Elaine’s story to see whether someone might be able to explain why its systems had prompted a random Johnny S as the most likely recipient of her cash, rather than the Johnny S who was saved in her contacts.

Pricewatch also went digging. We were able to establish that it is indeed possible for someone to save a contact, but be prompted to send the money to someone else in certain conditions.

In this case, our reader saved her friend’s full name which – coincidentally – happened to match the Revtag of a Revolut customer of the same name as her friend.

Revtags are unique, customisable handles that Revolut customers can use to send and receive transfers without having to share personal details such as an Iban, account number and all the rest.

So when Elaine searched for the person we have named as Johnny S, she was prompted by Revolut to send the money to another Johnny S who had that as his Revtag. We have seen screen grabs that suggest she would have been alerted to the fact that the Johnny S she was actually sending the cash to was not in her contacts, but it might easily be the kind of alert a normal person would miss if they knew the person they were sending the money to and if they were prompted with a matching name.

Apparently this “Show Revtag results” step comes before any non-contact user is presented to a customer, and users such as Elaine need to explicitly click on “Show Revtag results” for non-contact users to appear.

When we contacted Revolut about what happened, we were sent the following statement.

“We advise all of our customers to take extra care and to ensure that they are making a payment to the person they are intending to at all times. This was a very rare instance. In recognition of this, we have made a goodwill payment of €120 to [our reader].”

It seems like the big winner here, however, is the wrong Johnny S – who got €120 for absolutely nothing.