A man who had €10,000 stolen out of his Revolut account has said trying to get refunded by the app has been a “horrific battle”. 

Paul Anthony Walsh had been using the app to save in the hope he could soon apply for a mortgage. 

Recently, he pulled out his phone to buy a coffee and was surprised to see his card had been declined. 

“I just thought it was card issues in the terminal issues with the shop,” he told Lunchtime Live. 

“But when going outside and checking it, I could see that six transactions were made the day previously and about 10 grand in total was taken. 

“It was taken out in six minutes - so, really, really fast, really, really quickly - and it was taken out in Spain.” 

It turned out someone else had added a new virtual card to the app, allowing them to withdraw money from his account. 

Safeguards in place to protect app users’ money failed to work. 

“Unfortunately, I didn't get any of the alarm bells sent to me,” Mr Ward said. 

“All the alarm bells went to the user who added a virtual card in Spain and managed to get access to my account, was able to bypass biometrics and a passcode to get into the app on their phone. 

“And that's what's really, really worrying us.”

While Revolut did send Mr Ward an email, it landed in his spam. 

“I own a tech business, Adhere Digital, been in tech for 15 years,” he said. 

“But it's frustrating because I'm very technically capable, I'd like to imagine and something like this is even for people who are not technically savvy… is an absolute nightmare. 

“I was lucky enough to use my network to try and get cyber security analysts and other people to look at it - and all of them are like, there's no way this could have happened.” 

Mortgage hopes

It all means Mr Ward is unlikely to get on the property ladder any time soon. 

“Like, as you know, the housing market in Ireland is not great,” he said. 

“So, this has set me back at least two years to try and get a mortgage. 

“The reason I was kind of saving in that account anyway is just to show consistent saving, you know, chatting to my mortgage broker - just to make sure that funds were in there and that would be going towards my mortgage.” 

A man walking past 'For Sale' signs in Dublin. Picture by: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie.

Three months on, Mr Ward has still not had his money refunded and he remains “very disappointed” with Revolut’s response to his problem, describing his dealings with them as a ‘horrific battle’. 

“I sent them 194 messages alone, I had to speak to 18 different agents,” he recalled. 

“12 times I was transferred between agents, I asked them over 50 specific questions and out of those 50 specific questions, they only answered eight of them directly.

“So, that in total has taken up around 45 to 70 hours, there and thereabouts.

“So, trying to talk to someone and trying to get, speak to a human is almost impossible.”

In a statement to Newstalk, Revolut said they were “genuinely sorry” to hear about Mr Ward’s problem. 

“Whilst Revolut is unable to comment on the specifics of its interventions, so as to not provide any insight that could help ruthless criminals socially engineer their victims and bypass these, we are constantly innovating and testing a range of eye-catching warnings to protect our customers from scams,” a spokesperson said. 

“Revolut has full confidence that its customers’ accounts and funds are wholly protected and goes to every length to support users who report fraud.” 

Main image: A man downloading Revolut's app.