- Disposable card slashes fraud cases by 30% in under four months
- Revolut innovates with new individualised risk calculating algorithm
- Settles 150 staff into brand new Canary Wharf HQ
Fast growing digital bank and international money transfers upstart Revolut has declared its recently introduced disposable virtual cards for online purchases a resounding success.
The cards have resulted in a 30% decrease in card fraud cases since their launch in March this year. The virtual cards can be created by customers within seconds and “regenerate” after each transaction with different card details. This is proving to be an ingenious means of protecting customers from fraud. Even if a large online vendor has its credentials compromised by cybervillains, customers won’t suffer any financial losses because the card details they used previously no longer exist.
The rapidly expanding digital bank’s youthful Russian-born CEO, 33-year-old Nik Storonsky, who worked at Credit Suisse and Lehman brothers before setting up Revolut in 2015 with his colleague Vlad Yatsenko, said: “The recent security breach at TicketMaster, where an unknown third-party managed to gain access to their customer’s personal information, was a sharp reminder to all of us here at Revolut as to why we prioritised the launch of disposable virtual cards.”
The bank has recently moved its 150 staff into a chic new HQ office located on the fourth floor of the newly-refurbished Columbus Building in Westferry Circus, a part of East London’s glittering Canary Wharf district.
Earlier this month on 4 July, the fintech phenomenon announced that it had signed up one million customers in Britain alone and had already saved them more than USD $300m in fees. The startup has been signing up 6,000 to 9,000 users every single day, and now boasts over 2.25 million customers worldwide, 400,000 of whom are active weekly users while 900,000 are active monthly users.
All in all, at the time of that announcement, the bank had processed 125 million cross-border payments and other transactions amounting to USD $18.5bn in volume. In a recent interview for the British local news and community platform, InYourArea.com, Storonsky explained the secrets of Revolut’s stupendous success: “We provide everything for free, which banks don’t. Any bank charges you. We allow you free money transfers, free payments with your card at interbank rates.
“We give you a much better price on your insurance and access to cryptocurrencies. We allow you to instantly open a bank account without going to the branch. I would say we’re a modern version of a bank.”
And more innovations are coming through the challenger bank’s technology pipeline. It’s currently rolling out machine learning tech to enhance its compliance obligations and to apply individualised limits to customers based on their transaction histories. In other words, it’s applying personalised risk ratings to each and every one of its two million-plus customers. They’ll begin seeing the pre-existing, more generic risk ratings evaporating over the next few weeks.
Revolut’s Vice President of Operations Alan Chang told Finextra.com that the bank was thrilled to be introducing its new, leading-edge dynamic risk calculating algorithm, a development which has simply never been seen before in the financial services sector. The new algorithm will allow Revolut to train its investigatory efforts in a highly focused way on suspicious activity, while permitting regular users to continue to use its money transfer services without hassle.
If you’re interested in Revolut and would like to know more, please read this article.
