Revolut in Black Friday Blunder

A mobile-only banking company that does not accept cash deposits due to its belief that ‘digital payments are a more convenient way to pay’ left UK customers in the lurch as they took to the streets in search of Black Friday deals only to find they could not access their money.

Black Friday—traditionally the Friday following Thanksgiving in the United States—has become popular with retailers in many countries as a way to kickstart Christmas shopping by offering a wide variety of deals. Falling on 26 November this year, this Black Friday was reported to be the biggest ever in the UK, with sales estimated at around £9.2 billion across the weekend.

Unfortunately for customers of Revolut—a financial technology company headquartered in London—issues including being locked out of accounts, unable to top up or make card payments were reported throughout the day, with Revolut admitting several services were ‘partially unavailable’ just after three that afternoon.

The problems come just days after previous issues reported throughout November. Customers contacting the company via social media were told to raise individual queries with customer service agents within the Revolut app in order to regain access to their accounts. Outages are not new for the company, which also experienced problems around Black Friday last year, with one customer replying to a company tweet asking what customers would like them to do for the occasion with: ‘Unblock my card so I can make online payments.’

Revolut charges customers a two percent fee for withdrawing cash at ATMs and does not allow them to pay cash or cheques into their accounts, insisting ‘digital payments are a much safer and more convenient way to pay.’ This convenience may have been lost on its customers hoping to take advantage of the Black Friday sales.