Revolut to Strengthen Crypto Fraud Protections With Added Security, Risk Scores

The Revolut Pay enhanced due diligence API will be rolled out to crypto customers from start of 2025.

Updated Dec 16, 2024, 12:11 p.m. UTCPublished Dec 17, 2024, 8:00 a.m. UTC

Fintech giant Revolut plans to extend its battle-tested security wrapper, Revolut Pay, to crypto customers from the start of 2025 to improve protection against fraudulent attacks.

As it stands, Revolut says, there is limited visibility into card transactions and bank transfers its crypto customers make with exchanges, potentially exposing them to higher levels of fraud due to card mechanisms having limited anti-scam protections.

A 12-month pilot of firms using Revolut Pay’s enhanced due diligence, direct API integration and end-to-end control over the payment process showed crypto customers were exposed to about 50% fewer attempts to defraud them, Revolut said in a statement.

These enhancements include know-your-customer (KYC) name matching, fraud warning screens, proof of crypto delivery and the ability for crypto merchants to receive transaction risk scores.

Crypto has more than its fair share of fraudulent activity and scams, whether that involves identity theft, phishing scams and even the involvement of AI deep fakes and so on.

“In the crypto space, there's a little bit of an issue with fraud outcomes,” said Alex Codina, general manager for merchant payments at Revolut in an interview. “Now, crypto firms, either exchanges or on-rampers, can integrate Revolut Pay as a payment method and by doing that we allow our users to directly buy crypto on those checkouts in a safer manner.”

Match your customer

Under the hood, the integration with third-party exchanges or on-ramps starts with KYC matching, so validating that the person who is buying on Revolut side is the same person who is KYC’d on the exchange’s side.

“If those names don’t match the transaction is rejected. In the card world, this would be the equivalent of a stolen card or something like that,” Codina said.

Beyond that, firms are in a running battle to combat a sophisticated array of investment scams, whereby customers are duped into thinking they need to perform some transaction or other to qualify for a fictitious reward of some kind, he added.

“These are the hardest ones to deal with,” Codina said. “Basically what we do is assess the risk score of the transaction based on information on our users, like if they have traded crypto in the past or not with Revolut, with a third party, and assess the probability of that transaction being part of an investment scam.”

Obviously, a balance has to be struck when it comes to user experience and safety, Codina said. The safety measures put in place by Revolut could be a question or two about the transaction, or in some cases the customer could be referred to a customer services manager to briefly chat about the transaction.

“We have a pretty robust model and framework where we can add some friction, depending on how risky we think the transaction is,” he said.

Ian Allison

Ian Allison is a senior reporter at CoinDesk, focused on institutional and enterprise adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Prior to that, he covered fintech for the International Business Times in London and Newsweek online. He won the State Street Data and Innovation journalist of the year award in 2017, and was runner up the following year. He also earned CoinDesk an honourable mention in the 2020 SABEW Best in Business awards. His November 2022 FTX scoop, which brought down the exchange and its boss Sam Bankman-Fried, won a Polk award, Loeb award and New York Press Club award. Ian graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He holds ETH.