Revolut cards fail on Black Friday

A system failure left customers of the digital banking firm Revolut unable to access their money for several hours on "Black Friday", one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

At least six of Revolut’s services were affected by the outage, including the ability to sign-in, make card payments, transfer money and top up accounts via a bank card.

The app’s currency exchange was also affected, leaving cryptocurrency traders unable to enact transactions on the same day that Covid-19 fears have sent the price of Bitcoin tumbling by 6pc.

All of Revolut's services have now fully recovered.

Revolut said it first detected service outages around midday today. Chevone Lawrence, a 26-year-old sports coach from London, said she had not been able to access money in her Revolut account since Tuesday.

“I have not been able to get my money or spend on my Revolut card,” she said. Ms Lawrence, who has around £300 in her account, added that it had disrupted her budget planning for her family.

“I use that money for my four-month-old daughter,” she said. “I use it for nappies, baby clothes and formula.”

“My wages go directly into that account, and I can’t afford to be locked out.” Ms Lawrence said she did not plan to continue banking with Revolut, after limited help from their customer service team had left her feeling drained.

“I can’t afford for this to happen again. I’m going to ask my employer to pay into my other account with NatWest.”

Revolut’s system failure coincided with Black Friday, the biggest shopping event of the year. NatWest recorded more than four million transactions as of 2pm today, up by more than a quarter compared with the same time last year.