Digital bank Revolut experienced an App failure yesterday that left some customers hanging, according to a thread on Twitter. The embarrassing fail comes a bit over a month after Revolut announced the company had received a long-anticipated banking license.
Revolut took to Twitter to respond to customers questions and complaints.
We’re having an issue which is causing most features in the app to fail. Our engineers are on the case and we’ll let you know as soon as everything is back up and running again. We’re really sorry about this. ☹️
— Revolut (@RevolutApp) January 20, 2019
The company assured users the App failure was not due to a hack and services would be back up shortly. The outage appeared to inconvenience a good number of users who lacked an alternative banking service. Some users complained of an inability to log into their account while others said their card was declined even while sufficient funds were available.
Well this sucks, as I’m in a restaurant with my girlfriend. Looks like we’ll be washing the dishes tonight!
— Samuel Douglas (@sldouglas88) January 20, 2019
Very good. Imagine Revolut would be your only bank now. Can’t even buy a sandwich in this case.
— CoindropXAK (@CoindropX) January 20, 2019
I’ve had bank cards for 17 years and never had this issue.
I’ve had @RevolutApp for less than 5 months and hit this.— serialmatrix (@serialmatrix) January 20, 2019
Bit piss poor if you ask me. I’m a huge fan but when you rely on your Revolut card, and it doesn’t work, you’re leaving people stranded. You want to play with the banks, you need to be better than them. Not a happy customer at all.
— Ross @ randomshenans (@randomshenans) January 21, 2019
Growing Pains
Several hours later, Revolut announced that everything was back to normal. The company said the PR team would produce a report regarding the failure.
As the challenger bank sector heats up with alternatives such as Monzo, Starling, Marcus and more, such inconveniences may become a point of contention and competition between the digital banks. While any service can go down people tend to expect their primary bank to be bulletproof. I guess there is always cash.