Rightcard Payment Services Limited · DRN-5970281

The complaint Mr K complains that Rightcard Payment Services Limited trading as Lemfi won’t reimburse him after he fell victim to a job scam. What happened The background to this complaint is known to both parties and has been set out clearly already by our Investigator, so I won’t repeat the details here. But briefly, both parties accept that Mr K fell victim to a job scam, after he was contacted on instant messaging from someone purporting to be a recruiter. Unknown to Mr K at the time, this individual was in fact a fraudster. Mr K was told he could earn money by completing ‘tasks’ on an online platform. However, on occasion, where a ‘premium’ task was encountered, Mr K was required to send funds to the platform first. Mr K was advised by the fraudster to open an account with Lemfi. He deposited funds from another of his e-money accounts and made the following payments towards the scam: Date Payee Value 28/02/2025 One £51 01/03/2025 Two £55 01/03/2025 Two £100 01/03/2025 Two £409 01/03/2025 Three £1,500 01/03/2025 Four £1,500 01/03/2025 Five £1,500 Lemfi has said that when Mr K made payments towards the scam, it provided a warning message, setting out some situations under which a payment shouldn’t be made, including being told an account is at risk, or being offered a deal that is ‘too good to be true’. It also said that a further payment was attempted after those listed above, also on 1 March 2025, which was stopped for an account review and questioning. On 2 March 2025, Lemfi contacted Mr K and asked the purpose of this payment. Mr K told the agent that the payment was being made to a colleague who he owed funds to from a loan, but that Lemfi could cancel the payment in any event, as he needed urgent access to his account and funds. On 5 March 2025, Mr K contacted Lemfi to raise a scam claim. Lemfi attempted to recall Mr K’s funds from recipient accounts but was unsuccessful. Mr K remained unhappy and referred his complaint to our service. An Investigator considered the complaint but didn’t uphold it. He said that as this was a new account, Lemfi would have held limited information about Mr K to determine what was typical account use, and that payment values were initially too low for Lemfi to have intervened. The Investigator concluded that Lemfi could have intervened on payment seven, due to a pattern of higher value payments emerging. However, even if it had done more, the Investigator thought it

-- 1 of 4 --

was likely that Mr K wouldn’t have provided the honest reason for payments, as he didn’t do so when questioned about payment transfers by his e-money provider, or by Lemfi. Mr K disagreed with the Investigator’s view. To summarise some of his concerns, he said that: • While Lemfi has stated that it showed him in-app warnings, no evidence of this has been provided to demonstrate compliance with its duty of care to alert customers to potential scams. • Mr K’s e-money provider intervened much sooner than has been suggested that Lemfi was required to, despite both accounts having no prior transaction history. Questioning of payments by Lemfi is also not comparable with that by his e-money account provider, as the latter was relating to transfers between his own secure accounts, which therefore felt entirely safe. • The assertion that Mr K would have ignored questioning by Lemfi is incorrect – as it was the block on his account that made him reflect and realise that he had fallen victim to a scam. This is proven by no further payments taking place. Had Lemfi been more transparent in the reasons for his account block, he would have been able to respond appropriately. • Mr K was vulnerable at the time, with family commitments placing him under financial and emotional stress. As Mr K disagreed with the Investigator’s view, the complaint has been referred to me for a final decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. I want to start by saying I’m very sorry to hear of the situation Mr K has been left in – I understand the losses from this scam have had a significant impact on him - and while I’m not recommending Lemfi reimburses him, I don’t wish for this to downplay or diminish the impact these events must have nevertheless had on him. I’m also aware that I’ve summarised this complaint and the responses briefly, in less detail than has been provided, and in my own words. No discourtesy is intended by this. Instead, I’ve focused on what I think is the heart of the matter here – which is to determine whether Lemfi should be liable for any losses Mr K suffered as a result of this scam. If there’s something I’ve not mentioned, it isn’t because I’ve ignored it. I haven’t. I’m satisfied I don’t need to comment on every individual point or argument to be able to reach what I think is the right outcome. Our rules allow me to do this. This simply reflects the informal nature of our service as an alternative to the courts. As a starting point in law, Mr K is responsible for payments he’s instructed Lemfi to make. Unfortunately, there’s little protection available to him for bank transfer payments, like these were. There are, however, some situations where we believe that businesses, taking into account relevant rules, codes and best practice standards, shouldn’t have taken their customer’s authorisation instruction at ‘face value’ – or should have looked at the wider circumstances surrounding the transaction before making the payment.

-- 2 of 4 --

Taking this into account, I need to decide whether Lemfi acted fairly and reasonably in its dealings with Mr K. It isn’t in dispute here that Mr K has fallen victim to a cruel scam, but unfortunately, this alone isn’t sufficient for Lemfi to become liable for his losses caused by the scam. For me to conclude that Lemfi has treated Mr K unfairly by failing to reimburse him, I’d need to determine that it ought to have done more to protect him from financial harm from fraud, when he made the payments listed above. While I’m sorry to disappoint Mr K, I can’t conclude that this is the case. Mr K opened his account with Lemfi as advised to by the fraudster, and the payments towards the scam were the first activity from the account. Therefore, Lemfi had little information about Mr K’s typical spending to rely on when deciding whether payments were out of character for him or not. Payments made were initially low in value that I wouldn’t have expected Lemfi to have identified as warranting investigation. However, I agree with the Investigator that by the time the seventh payment was made, Mr K had made several more notable payments on the same day to differing payees and that this arguably ought to have caused further questioning by Lemfi. I agree with Mr K that for Lemfi to refer to in-app warnings it provided to him, further evidence should be provided proving these were part of its payment process. In any event, I don’t think the warnings Lemfi presented were relevant to the scam Mr K fell victim to, or would’ve impacted his decision on whether to proceed. I’ve therefore thought about what action I consider would have been appropriate at the time Mr K made the seventh payment. I think appropriate action would have been for Lemfi to have further questioned Mr K about this payment, whether that be in-app, by email or by phone, to better ascertain the reason for payment. However, I agree with the Investigator that based on the available evidence, I don’t think proportionate intervention by Lemfi would have made a difference here. I say this because when Mr K attempted an eighth payment, this was blocked by Lemfi for review and it did ask Mr K for the payment purpose, to which Mr K provided an inaccurate response. Additionally, I’m aware that when questioned by his e-money provider as to why he was sending funds to another account, Mr K also provided inaccurate answers that he was sending funds to his family abroad. Therefore on both occasions where Mr K was questioned, he didn’t provide any information about the job he had entered into and the tasks he was funding. While Mr K has suggested that he realised he’d fallen victim to a scam when his account was blocked by Lemfi, I can’t agree based on the evidence that it was this block specifically that led to him discovering this was a scam. I say this because, having reviewed correspondence between Mr K and the fraudster, I can see that after the account block, Mr K attempted to open other accounts through which he could make payments, but as these were also blocked pending account reviews, Mr K was unsuccessful in sending funds this way either. I can also see that Mr K was still in contact with the fraudster until May 2025 in an attempt to reduce the amount he was required to pay to the platform. For these reasons, while I agree that Lemfi could have acted sooner and asked further questions of Mr K when making these payments, the evidence doesn’t persuade me that Mr K would’ve been honest in his answers and that the scam would therefore have been uncovered. Similarly, while Mr K’s other e-money account provider may have intervened sooner, this doesn’t lead me to reach a different conclusion regarding when Lemfi should fairly have intervened. In any event, this earlier intervention didn’t impact Mr K’s decision to proceed with the scam payments.

-- 3 of 4 --

I’ve considered whether, once advised of the scam, Lemfi did enough to recover Mr K’s funds. Unfortunately the scam wasn’t raised with Lemfi until around four days after the scam payments had been made. Lemfi has stated that it contacted the beneficiary account providers at this time to attempt to recover Mr K’s money, but have only been able to provide evidence of the chasers they sent. Nevertheless, I have to bear in mind that in most scams, unfortunately, victims’ funds are moved almost immediately, usually within hours, in order to prevent successful recovery of funds. As Lemfi weren’t made aware of the scam until several days after payments had been made, I don’t think there were any likely prospects of success in recovering funds, even if attempts had been made immediately. I’ve also considered Mr K’s point that he was vulnerable at the time of the scam. Unfortunately, in order to consider that Lemfi ought to have accounted for any of Mr K’s vulnerabilities at the time he made the payments, I’d need to conclude that it was aware of them at that time and therefore ought to have factored these in when determining whether he was at risk of financial harm from fraud. As this account was opened as part of the scam and Lemfi therefore wasn’t aware of any such vulnerabilities, I can’t conclude it acted unreasonably in this regard. Therefore while I’m very sorry to disappoint Mr K, and while I appreciate he’s been the victim of a cruel scam, I don’t think liability for his losses rests with Lemfi and I’m therefore not directing it to reimburse him. My final decision My final decision is that I don’t uphold Mr K’s complaint against Rightcard Payment Services Limited trading as Lemfi. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr K to accept or reject my decision before 8 April 2026. Kirsty Upton Ombudsman

-- 4 of 4 --