Many consumers across the UK are falling to scams originating from Meta platforms: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. According to Revolut, the UK neobank, 33 per cent of money lost to scams in total originated on these platforms. To better protect its consumers, the neobank has launched an advanced scam detection feature.
The need for a service like this is evident as scams continue to rise across all platforms, not just the Meta-owned ones. However, reported cases on these platforms rose from 52 per cent to 66 per cent in H2’23. Putting worries to ease, Revolut has provided its customers with 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.
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 blocking 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.”
Customer protection
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 per cent reduction in the fraud losses resulting from card scams where money has been sent for investment opportunities.
Francis Bignell
