Revolut customer? Then you can no longer travel by train with their app. What about that?

Many questions about our editors this morning About the news of the NOS that the NS has blocked digital payment cards From a number of fintechs: Online Bank Revolut and Pay services Paysafe and Vivid. Their customers cannot travel with their digital passes with the Dutch Railways (or in the case of Paysafe the entire Dutch public transport), because too often there was fraud with those passes. The fraudsters used one -off digital bank cards. Revolut customers who have a physical payment card can still check in.

What is a one -time digital payment card?

A digital payment card is actually not a ‘pass’: it is a digital version of the plastic card with which you can pay. The data from the payment card (account number and pass number) is then stored digitally in the app of that financial service provider. That is certainly not a niche service: actually everyone who sometimes pays with his smartphone or smart wristwatch has used such a digital payment card. And those are many people: a third of the payments at the counter took place last year.

With the classic major banks, that digital pass is actually a counterpart to the physical payment card that they also have. This is no longer always the case with many fintech companies: customers often no longer have plastic cards, but only a digital payment card.

And these types of services often have the option of creating multiple ‘passes’ with your own account numbers. For example, Vivid offers fifteen account numbers per user to make separate piggy banks. A Dutch Neobank like Bunq offers a maximum of 25, depending on the payment package.

What makes fraud with public transport travel possible is that one-off account numbers can be created at these payment services. For example, to be able to make a payment at a webshop that you do not fully trust without them being able to write off more money.

How did the fraud work?

What the fraudulent travelers did is apply for such a temporary bill from their payment service and thereby check in with an public transport port. When checking, these travelers had a valid ticket. After checking out, however, the account number used was immediately deleted.

There it is avenging that when traveling with a bank card – possibly since 2022 – an amount is only debited in the night after the trip. If there is no more payment account, there is no amount to collect by the public transport companies.

An NS spokesperson said that this phenomenon has been playing for some time, and that other banks that offer similar services have successfully taken measures to prevent this form of fraud. Despite letters from Translink, the company that makes public transport payments, Revolut, Paysafe and Vivid did that insufficient.

“The only thing that remained was the decision to block all digital payment cards from these providers,” said the NS spokesperson. Without mentioning amounts, according to her it was a “serious problem.” “We really don’t just do such a blockade, because the payment card is the way to make public transport accessible.” She emphasizes that it is a temporary measure. “We hope that the three companies will still take adequate measures, so that their customers can travel with us again.”

In a reaction, Revolut announced the blockage to “deeply regret”. The Lithuanian Neobank says that it has already taken ‘proactive’ measures to reduce the fraud, so that the unpaid journeys of their customers would have already taken three-quarters in the past two years. The bank states that the cause does not lie with them, but when it is made to pay the journey only in the night. Revolut sees itself on legal steps “in the interest of our customers”.

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