Electronic money services for buyers and sellers

Electronic money (e-money) is pre-paid money you store electronically on cards, devices or online systems and use to make payments to other parties. 

It includes online services like PayPal, Revolut, Tide, Wirecard and Skrill, which customers can use to pay or receive money for goods and services. The following guidance is for complaints about this kind of service. 

If you have a complaint about an online service you’ve used to pay or receive money for goods and services, we may be able to help. 

For example, we may be able to help if: 

• the business unfairly reversed a payment 
• the business unfairly placed restrictions on your account

We can help with complaints about e-money businesses. But, we can’t directly resolve disputes between buyers and sellers who have used an e-money account for a transaction. 

To help us consider a complaint fairly, we’ll ask you to provide some information. We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence provided by you, the business and any relevant third parties. In reaching a decision, we consider: 

• the relevant law
• any regulations that applied at the time
• any industry codes of conduct in force at the time
• the terms and conditions of the account that the disputed transaction was made from. We’ll check to see whether the business has applied the terms and conditions fairly and correctly. 

Talk to the e-money business first so that they have the chance to put things right. From 13 January 2018, where the case involved e-money, businesses are expected to issue their final response within 15 business days. However, in some instances where the case may be complex, they might need to take longer than this and send a final response within 35 business days. 

We'll check whether your complaint is something we can deal with. If it is, we’ll investigate to understand what happened and what went wrong. 

Find out more about making a complaint. 

If we think the e-money business has done something wrong or treated you unfairly, we’ll ask them to put things right. This usually involves putting you back in the position you’d be in if things hadn’t gone wrong. This will depend on the individual circumstances and how you’ve been affected.