Revolut will cover costs for customers hit by data hack, Western Europe CEO says

By Elizabeth Howcroft

PARIS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Revolut will cover the cost of customers wanting to change their identity documents after the London-based bank was tricked into giving hackers the data of hundreds of customers, the company's CEO for Western Europe said on Wednesday.

Revolut, Europe's most valuable startup, said it had sent the customers' personal data to hackers who had taken control of an Italian government agency email address, in an incident first disclosed last month. 

Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier, Revolut's CEO for Western Europe, told BFM TV in an interview that the company would not pay ransoms to hackers, when asked if they had paid one. Revolut previously said it had not received a ransom demand.

Cossa-Dumurgier said Revolut had provided assistance for the 680 affected clients, 55 of whom are in France.

"If they ever have to change their ID documents, we're taking care of the associated costs", she added, without specifying whether this had happened yet or how much it could cost the company.

Financial institutions are required to send customer data to authorities when asked to do so as part of investigations into potential crimes.

Matteo Piantedosi, Italy's interior minister, told lawmakers on September 30 that the email address to which Revolut sent customer data came from the Reggio Calabria police's email system, but was an address that had never been used before.

Revolut could have and should have verified the request by doing minimal due diligence, the minister said.

A spokesperson for Revolut declined to comment on the interior minister's remarks.

Cossa-Dumurgier said that government agencies are sometimes the "weak link" in the system and that Revolut's own systems had not been compromised.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris, additional reporting by Valentina Za in Milan; editing by Barbara Lewis)