Revolut says 58% of reported job scams globally came from Telegram in 2025, dwarfing other platforms for these cases, based on an analysis of 10B+ transactions
Context & Ripple Effects
Revolut’s analysis arrives after a rise in authorized-push-payment scam complaints had already made fraud prevention a reputational issue for the fintech. Its planned international expansion and investment program raises the importance of applying those controls consistently across markets.
Telegram had separately faced EU scrutiny over its reported user figures, making this payment-provider data another source of attention on how large messaging platforms account for harms connected to their services.
First-order effects
- Telegram is singled out as the dominant source within Revolut’s reported job-scam cases, concentrating public scrutiny on its anti-scam safeguards.
- For Revolut, the transaction analysis creates a clearer basis to treat job-scam payment patterns associated with Telegram as a distinct fraud-risk category rather than a generic scam problem.
Second-order effects
- The finding could increase pressure on messaging platforms and payment providers to share actionable scam signals and make reporting paths easier to use.
- Other fintechs may be pushed to measure and disclose where reported scams originate, turning fraud performance into a more visible trust and competitive issue.
Third-order effects
- If payment providers increasingly publish origin attribution, platform-safety debates could shift from content moderation alone toward measurable downstream financial harm.
- This points toward broader accountability across messaging and payments, although reported-case attribution does not by itself establish each platform’s overall scam prevalence.
The trend: Financial institutions are using transaction data to connect online scam channels with payment harm, increasing pressure for cross-platform fraud accountability.