Early last summer a reader called Lisa decided to do something to help people less fortunate than herself by donating her spare virtual change to the Red Cross but her good deed ended up costing her a whole lot more than she planned – or could afford.
The story starts with Revolut. The fintech has a feature on its app that allows people to “do some good”, Lisa explains. Users can choose to make donations that are either recurring on a monthly basis or based on a rounding up of everyday spending.
According to Revolut, users can round up their “spare change” to the nearest whole number on any card transaction made.
So, if a person spends €1.80, the total is rounded up to €2 with the 20 cent going to the charity of their choice. People can also choose to “accelerate” their rounding up by authorising Revolut to increase the donation by multiples of between two and 10. That would see a person who uses an accelerator of 10 donating €2 from a transaction that cost €1.80, for example up, to a maximum of €9.90 per card transaction.
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Anyway, back to Lisa.
“So, in early May last year I chose to make a spare change donation. To be honest I have a very vague recollection of doing this at all, hence I didn’t even recognise the debits when I downloaded my Revolut statement. I would be quite cautious about the money that leaves this account as it doesn’t always have much in it. I use it to make small payments, transfer money to friends and service my daughter’s child account,” she writes.
Fast forward to last week when Lisa noticed for the first time that the debits from the account after a supermarket purchase were often more than the cost of the products she bought.
“Yet nothing appeared on the app transaction list to explain this. So I assumed there was some sort of skimming happening to my card and immediately got on to the Revolut help chat.”
She describes this experience as “frustrating enough because they don’t even seem to understand what is going on, and while they were ‘investigating’, I decided to see if I could log into Revolut on my computer to get a clearer view of the transaction history. Then I discovered I could generate and download my statements. I saw multiple debits to the Irish Red Cross forever changing amounts. I still had no idea what was happening, but I understood it was unlikely to be a scam.”
She eventually discovered she had made contributions totalling €459.70 over a 10-month period. “I was very shocked. I am a mature student and my husband is the sole earner for a family, so this is money I did not have. Had I seen the first debit I would have, at the very least, changed the setting to “x 1″ instead of “x 10,” she writes.
We relayed Lisa’s concerns to Revolut and unfortunately the news we got back was not good for her
She complained to Revolut, who immediately refunded the charges from the previous 30 days. “But I am still waiting for word back about the rest. The sour aspect of it is I do not want to withdraw money from a charity, especially as my intention was to donate in the first place. I am hoping that Revolut will refund me all the charges at their expense – not the IRC – and then I can choose to make a one-off donation according to what I can afford,” she says.
She adds that she is “a tech-savvy, intelligent person so if I have multiple issues with this whole scheme I think other people must have too and they need to be made aware of the issues I’ve encountered”.
And she points to an apparent absence of transparency during set-up to explain the terms and conditions of what one is actually donating and how this is calculated, and notes that the charges are not listed on the transaction list of the app at all. “There is no reminder anywhere that you’ve just donated a certain amount.
“I need to accept responsibility for signing up to this scheme (despite not recalling doing so!). However, once this happens, the debits are effectively hidden from the user, making informed decisions about their spending very difficult. As a financial institution, Revolut are held to higher standards and this is not acceptable.”
We relayed Lisa’s concerns to Revolut and unfortunately the news we got back was not good for her.
“We’re sorry to hear of [Lisa’s] situation. Revolut Donations is designed to make it simple to make a difference by donating with just a tap. Customers are able to donate by rounding up their spare change, as [Lisa] chose to, setting up recurring donations, or by making a one-off donation.
“Our partner charities receive 100 per cent of donations with no fees from Revolut,” the statement said. “All spare change transactions are visible at transaction level within the Revolut app, as well as within customers’ bank statements; this ensures that customers can clearly see what they’re spending and how much they are donating to any given cause.
“Customers can cancel any future donations before they are made, but cannot cancel any donation that has already been made. This applies to all donations, whether they are made as one-off donations, by rounding up spare change or as scheduled donations. While the terms and conditions are clear on this, we are constantly updating our app to ensure features such as Donations are simple and easy to use for our customers.”
