I want to share a story about a problem I had this week. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this issue and if they know the reason for it. I also just want it flagged somewhere in case Revolut (“Rev”) themselves can address it.
Short version of events:
On the 1st August, a US client sent us a wire for a five figure USD amount to our USD Revolut account.
After five days of waiting, nothing had appeared. Yesterday (8 days later), Rev customer support managed to help me. It appears she got the BIC correct but put the IBAN into the wrong field. This means Rev received the wire (the money, including our name, address and IBAN in the wrong place) but they could not assign it to our individual account.
Despite all those details, it wasn’t enough for Rev to agree the money was ours. They say the customers bank has to “amend” the wire.
The Customers bank says they cannot “amend” the wire.
Rev say if I can support the wire receipt (customer provided it) they can use that as proof and “reject” the wire. That has now been done, and it’ll take 3 days for the money to go back to America, and then the customer will send it again, taking the usual 5 days.
Has anyone else gone through this? I realise it was our customers mistake (and so I am not angry nor do I particularly blame Revolut) but considering the original transfer contained all our Revolut bank details but in the wrong order, it was obviously for us. And considering the receipt was proof enough to give me the authority to reject a transfer which isn’t linked to my account, why isn’t it proof enough to get the money released to our account?
It’s provoked debate here, as we assume that it is safer to reject rather than release from a fraud perspective but also let’s note that this one mistake has meant a payment delay of (up to 17 days).
Well,
I understand that getting the details of the wire wrong (even if the details are of proper content but in wrong order) means that Revolut cannot release money. It is probably some simple compliance issue and one can do nothing about that. However they should reject the wire on the basis of wrong details alone. Once they allowed you to reject it since you had provided the receipt - you should also be entitled to accept it and get the money. That’s how I understand integrity.
I agree. If a Revolut person sees this, I would be interested to know why I had the power to reject the wire but not release the funds to me.
Update to this story: Since the customer made their mistake on the 1st August, it took 6 business days to identify the problem (I checked in with Rev numerous times during this period), a day to get Revolut to reject the wire, and we’re on day 3 of 5 waiting for the money to go back to the US, and then it’ll take up to 5 further days for it to come back to Revolut.
UPDATE: 28 days after my first post (45+ days since this all started).
Revolut gave me the authority to ‘reject’ the payment back to the clients bank (RBC). BUT Revolut made a mistake and sent it to the wrong account somehow.
Revolut then had to ask RBC to reject the wire back to them. That was on the 28th August (14 days ago).
The last update from anyone was on the 7 September. Revolut have* ignored my daily emails since for updates. They won’t tell me what happens when the money gets back from RBC - will it go back to Revolut limbo? Will I be notified? Will my customer?
I don’t think Revolut know. When I ask if I can escalate or complain they won’t even give me a way to do that, so I think I’m powerless unless I resort to social media.
*EDITED: to correct a typo and highlight it is Revolut that isn’t responding.