Revolut’s a disposable raver for virtual cards
“Online card fraud is running rampant across Europe right now”
UK-based start-up Revolut has unveiled disposable virtual cards as it seeks to combat fraud.
According to the firm, online card fraud is running rampant across Europe right now, increasing by nearly 10% in 2016 to €1.8 billion, with France and the UK at the top of the list.
In the last two years, Revolut says it’s been at the forefront of tackling card fraud, from allowing customers to freeze / unfreeze their cards to disabling features like contactless or swipe payments and ATM withdrawals.
With this scenario in mind, it wants to “improve the diversity” of its premium accounts, via the disposable virtual cards.
The system works by detecting the online payment transaction and then automatically destroys those card details, generating new ones that will appear directly in the app.
The cards are only available to Premium customers. Each Premium user can create one disposable card per account.
Revolut adds that although many people believe ATM card cloning is the most common type of card fraud, data shows the majority of these cases take place online in a type of transaction known as card not present or CNP.
CNP transactions occur when the buyer and seller are not in the same location and the majority of CNPs consist of online payments.
For fraud prevention purposes, a disposable virtual card will work for up to five payments per day.
Its cards will not work with subscription services or any other type of recurring payment, since the details will renew after every payment.
Even and Twitter
Earlier this month, Revolut said it broke even for the first time.
The bank, which was launched in mid-2015, says it reached this happy place in December. In a coquettish display it revealed the news, but not a lot of financial details. But it does say that on average, it gets between 6,000 and 8,000 new users per day.
By the way, a few days ago on Twitter, a person noted: “Revolut claim to have 1.6m users with no marketing. Apparently the people being paid to hand out cards to people at the back of the room afterwards don’t count as marketing.”
Revolut claim to have 1.6m users with no marketing. Apparently the people being paid to hand out cards to people at the back of the room afterwards don't count as marketing ??♀️ #IFGS2018
— Sharon O'Dea (@sharonodea) March 19, 2018
This observation occurred at Innovate Finance Global Summit 2018 in London – and got a lot of interest and comments.
