Revolut has made access to the app more difficult. You'll thank him for it
Revolut has introduced a new biometric identification function, independent of the system solutions on the phone. All this to protect users against losing money in the event of phone theft, which often happens during holiday trips.
Revolut introduces Wealth Protectionnew fbiometric identification functionj, which is intended to protect customers' savings against pickpockets and phone thieves. As the fintech explains, the service was specially launched before the holiday season and summer festivals, during which there is a high risk of phone theft.
Revolut Wealth Protection is an additional layer of identity verification in the application. The service is an element of the Revolut Secure security system combining various technologies (biometrics, AI), which is intended to provide customers with greater control over how their finances are protected.
The plague of theft of unlocked phones
According to the fintech, the service will help protect the funds of customers whose phone has been stolen or password security and facial recognition have been compromised. In such situations, criminals can easily steal money from your account. It's about incidents involving a pickpocket will take the unlocked phone out of our hands and change the registered face image or fingerprint to your own.
Revolut argues that the risk of having an unlocked phone stolen is very high. Cause as much as 39% of customer losses Revolut related to unauthorized fraud in 2023 were just that physical theft – in Poland it was 32%. This plague increases during the holidays, when tourists are busy sightseeing, they take pictures, publish content on social media, it is easy to snatch the phone from their hands. In London, a phone is stolen on average every 6 minutes. Clients are exposed to both observation-based techniques when the thief first tries to see the password to the phone and banking applications, and then uses them to bypass security and steal the phone immediately after unlocking.
Revolut points out that many banking applications use standard biometric authorization built into mobile devices, e.g. facial or fingerprint recognition. These methods are usually used to open an application which then becomes completely vulnerable to attack.
Revolut puts an additional barrier here. Once enabled, Wealth Protection will verify the client's identity based on identity and selfie checks, which the customer completed when first registering in the Revolut app. The feature, which customers can activate at their discretion, blocks access to selected Revolut Pockets accounts. They are intended to provide additional protection for customer funds advanced artificial intelligence models.
The Wealth Protection feature will be rolled out gradually available from June subsequent groups of customers.