UK unicorn Revolut is fighting back after its week from hell
- The Telegraph alleged that Revolut turned off software designed to stop money laundering, which the challenger bank strongly denies.
- Then Wired magazine published an exposé on the company's work culture.
- And The Telegraph reported that Revolut's CFO had secretly left the company in January.
- The company's app also had some technical issues that bothered customers.
- Revolut fired back at the claims in comments to Business Insider.
Thursday was a bad day for Revolut, one of the UK's most famous fintech start-up success stories.
The Telegraph alleged that for three months last year, Revolut turned off software designed to stop money laundering and dubious money transfers - and the company hit back in an open letter published Friday.
"At no point during this time did we fail to meet our legal or regulatory requirements," said CEO Nik Storonsky in the letter. We conducted a thorough review of all transactions that were processed during this time, which confirmed that there were no breaches."
Then Wired piled on. The tech magazine published an exposé on the company's work culture, saying that applicants were asked to work for free, and that high staff turnover was hurting the company's image.
On Friday things only got worse. The Telegraph reported that CFO Peter O'Higgins, who joined Revolut in 2016, had secretly left the company in January, which Revolut later confirmed.
Then, in a tweet on Friday morning, Revolut said it was having technical issues, which elicited dozens of angry replies from frustrated customers:
Revolut fired back at the Telegraph's claims. In an emailed response to Business Insider, CEO Nik Storonsky said that the software issue was part out of new system rollout:
"Like any technology company, we always seek to improve our systems. The new systems were not calibrated to a standard that we would expect, so we reverted to our existing process until calibration was complete."
"At no point during this time do we believe that we failed to meet our legal or regulatory sanctions requirements," the CEO wrote, adding that at no point did the company formally notify the UK financial regulator. "A thorough review has been undertaken of the transactions that were processed, which has confirmed that there were no sanctioned transactions."
And in another email to Business Insider, Revolut confirmed the CFO's departure. Former CFO Peter O'Higgins said: "As Revolut begins to scale globally and applies to become a bank in multiple jurisdictions, the time has come to pass the reigns over to someone who has global retail banking experience at this level."
Revolut declined to immediately comment on the Wired report about its workplace culture.