With great power, comes great threat #Revolut #PayPal

With great power, comes great responsibility. It’s a quote from Spiderman, but actually not. It’s from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben. Well, it’s not tbh. It’s from Voltaire … or is it? Wherever it is from, it’s a great phrase.

So, here’s a new one. With great power, comes great threat, and that one is from me. You can see this in action in everything from Nicollo Machiavelli’s The Prince to The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

What’s this got to do with fintech, banking, money and the future?

Well, one of the recent big headlines is that Revolut are the #1 target for scammers. Bloomberg reports:

Revolut Ltd. has denied thousands of UK customers’ requests to be reimbursed after they were defrauded by scammers, leading many of them to turn to the country’s Financial Ombudsman Service for help with their case.

The fintech giant saw a 35% surge in new fraud complaints from customers in the second half of 2023, the latest period for which data is available, according to figures provided by the ombudsman. That topped all rivals and UK lenders and comes as regulators ramp up efforts to tackle online scams plaguing the industry.

New complaints faced by Revolut jumped to 2,208 in the period, from 1,630 in the first half. That compares with an almost 10% decline at Barclays Plc’s local operations, about a 3% reduction at Lloyds Banking Group Plc and a 1% increase at HSBC Holdings Plc’s UK unit.

Maybe this is why the UK regulator is refusing Revolut a UK banking license. And it’s not just the UK, but the ECB (European Central Bank).

Revolut’s EU unit forms a big part of its business, accounting for more than 40% of total revenue. It’s also Lithuania’s third-biggest bank, with €12.1 billion ($13.2 billion) in assets at the end of last year. The lender’s position as one of the country’s largest is the reason why the ECB took over supervision from the Bank of Lithuania at the beginning of this year.

With great power, comes great responsibility, comes great threat,

When you have great power – over 40 million users – you become the target, just as the King of the Court is always being wary of the Princes who want to kill him or, by way of another example, the most targeted financial website of the world by hackers and scammers is … PayPal. According to Cyber Risk Leaders, PayPal is a hacker’s haven. Why? Because it is the poster child of payments and therefore the most powerful company in its space to target for attack.

But then, by way of reflection, PayPal has become the world’s best company for defence from attack. Revolut will probably do the same. These are two companies who are achieving and moving towards something I have advocated for years: to be bulletproof.

If you have great power, you have great responsibility to kill all threats or, in other words, to be bulletproof. Most banks say they can never make this claim. There will always be cracks and hacks. However, by not making this claim, they are undermining the trust of the customer. What? You’re not bulletproof? I could be hacked?

This is the greatest challenge of our time and, in my view, if you have great responsibility then yes you should say that you are bulletproof. Any threats or attacks will be defused and denied and, if they are not, you will be 1000% protected from those threats or attacks. In other words, if I am a great power with great responsibility then I take on any threat or attack and GUARANTEE you are protected.

#justsaying

 

Postscript: I did note that Revolut shared the Top 5 Scams to warn people. Read more here:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/revolut_top-5-scams-activity-7221083894215823360-OBPu