‘Bank closed my account after I selected Guernsey in its App’
APP-BASED bank Revolut has reassured Guernsey residents that it does operate locally, despite an islander being locked out of her account after clicking on a Guernsey flag.
Jo Peacegood said she received an error message on the banking app asking ‘Are you resident in Guernsey?', which included the Guernsey flag, with the options to respond 'yes’ or ‘no’.
She pressed ‘yes’, and said she immediately received a message saying her account was closed and she was unable to access her funds.
Despite making numerous attempts to get her account reinstated, the bank would not explain what the problem was.
‘I used a chat function and was told by an operator that they could not tell me why my account was closed, but just gave me a link to pages and pages of terms and conditions and said the reason's in there.’
Ms Peacegood used the banking app for convenience when travelling.
‘Luckily it was only a small amount, but what if it wasn’t, or this happened while I was abroad and I really needed the funds?’
The Guernsey Press contacted Revolut on her behalf, and only a few days later her account was reinstated.
A spokesmen for the fintech company said: ‘We want to reassure customers that Guernsey is still supported and that customers are onboarding in the same way as in the UK.’
Revolut said it was accepting customers from Guernsey, despite its website not listing the Channel Islands as one of the jurisdictions they support.
The website states: ‘We’re currently only supporting legal residents of the European Economic Area (EEA), Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil and the United States.’
And as Guernsey is not in the EEA or technically part of the UK, it is not clear how the Channel Islands are included.
The company’s spokesman said: ‘We can’t clarify why the information on the website is not clear and this is being investigated.’
It appears Ms Peacegood may have fallen foul of the bank’s automatic suspension protocols that may have been triggered by her Guernsey address.
Revolut, as with other more traditional financial institutions, uses algorithms to identify potential fraud and money laundering, but unlike the rest of the banking industry, its algorithms additionally trigger an automated suspension of accounts.
It has a history of automatically suspending accounts, with this problem being a subheading on the company’s Wikipedia page.
