I guess it depends which country? Revolut in Switzerland and UK is FinTech (banking licence is limited to EEA)
Just a remark, Revolut is not a bank, but only a FinTec company without banking license.
Revolut is a bank.
How about this one:
Paying one’s tax with a debit card.
Declined.
Phone the bank to find out why.
Their security involves sending you an sms.
In the countryside, bad signal, sms arrives too late.
Their system allows sending the sms only once!
The bank blocks the account and all cards. You are totally stuffed. Cannot pay anything, including tax.
Until you go to a branch with ID and god knows what else.
But with so many branches closed, it’s a half day job.
There must be some mileage in a national newspaper article on this.
Any solutions?
Peter wrote:
Any solutions?
Why would anybody pay tax with debit card? It should be normal account to account transaction. BTW any bank using SMS for security is a bank to be avoided.
There are many good solutions for this problem but none of them includes SMS. In general, 3D secure protocol is a solution for improved security in online card payments. Authentication mechanisms added on top of it should be based on strong authentication tokens implemented as physical devices or mobile applications possibly with push-messages.
I try to keep 5 debit cards active. Only 4 at present, one declined.
A debit card is useful because you can potentially pay larger amounts on it than the daily limit on website bank payments. And it avoids the “procedure” of setting up a new payee, which involves getting a phone call and entering a code.
All UK banks I know of use SMS for security. Does anyone know a good one which uses some sort of internet delivered auth?
Cards are not an immediate issue; I have several because, as I wrote previously, at least one gets blocked when abroad 
But the repayments are now blocked…
Tomorrow I will visit a physical branch and give them absolute hell, in front of the customer queue, but at the same time I need to prevent this happening again. Hence my question.
Peter wrote:
All UK banks I know of use SMS for security. Does anyone know a good one which uses some sort of internet delivered auth?
First Direct.
As they don’t have any customer offices, you have to do everything remotely, so no branch visits! :)
And you use their mobile APP to set up new payee without any texts
Hsbc. Also authenticated via app. No SMS
A debit card is useful because you can potentially pay larger amounts on it than the daily limit on website bank payments.
Strange policy which shows that website doesn’t have appropriate security implemented. Any bank with appropriate level of security will allow same limits for web banking and debit card bound to same account.
And it avoids the “procedure” of setting up a new payee, which involves getting a phone call and entering a code.
That’s weird. I can pay any amount to anyone whenever I want as long as I have money on my account and use appropriate authentication device. I don’t need any “setting up payee” procedure. For company account I have PIN protected smart card / USB token with digital certificate which is mutually authenticated when accessing online banking site and which generates qualified digital signature when executing transaction.
What you describe looks like online banking 30 years ago.
Peter wrote:
Does anyone know a good one which uses some sort of internet delivered auth?
HSBC
In any case, I find this whole saga totally weird. I have traveled extensively (100+ countries, every continent) all my life, and don’t recall a single instance of a declined / blocked CC. Then again, I have always banked with major institutions.
