{"id":7102,"date":"2019-02-04T12:43:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T12:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/backlash-at-single-shaming-banking-ad\/"},"modified":"2019-02-04T12:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T12:43:46","slug":"backlash-at-single-shaming-banking-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/backlash-at-single-shaming-banking-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlash at ‘single-shaming’ banking ad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"RevolutImage copyright<\/span>
\n Iona Bain<\/span><\/p>\n

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Financial technology company Revolut has been accused of “single-shaming” after its current promotional campaign sparked a backlash on Twitter.<\/p>\n

The company, which launched in 2015, bills itself as an alternative to banks and offers app-based current accounts.<\/p>\n

It has been running ads on the London Tube highlighting the number of people who ordered a takeaway meal for one on Valentine’s Day last year.<\/p>\n

But the campaign has been criticised as “intrusive” and “tone-deaf”. <\/p>\n

Revolut has been contacted for a response, but no-one was available to comment.<\/p>\n

Financial commentator Iona Bain, who first drew attention to the ads, said it was patronising and unworthy of a firm trying to attract young, tech-savvy customers.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t tell you anything about the service,” she told the BBC.<\/p>\n

“It just says they will spy on your spending, so people can laugh at your poor unfortunate single status later on.”<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n Iona Bain<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Iona Bain is founder of the Young Money Blog
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Ms Bain, founder of the Young Money Blog<\/a>, tweeted that the ad’s language was “more redolent of early 2000s Bridget Jones” than “a modern and empowered fintech brand”.<\/p>\n

“I knew a lot of people would agree with me, but I have been surprised by the amount of responses,” she said.<\/p>\n

She said that those supporting her comments included widows who found such ads unhelpful at this time of year.<\/p>\n

“A meal for one, that’s a perfectly valid life choice,” she added. “It’s not their business to be shaming anyone for making that choice.”<\/p>\n

More importantly, she said, it also played on people’s concerns about improper use of their data and whether their financial activity was private.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just something that triggers a few snowflakes on the London Underground,” she added.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n Revolut<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Revolut founder Nikolay Storonsky says his organisation is adding up to 8,000 customers a day
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Revolut offers a current account service which allows people to make and receive payments, withdraw money from cash machines and transfer money abroad. <\/p>\n

It was not a bank when it started, but it announced in December that it had been granted an EU banking licence by the European Central Bank. It still aims to acquire a full UK banking licence.<\/p>\n

It has already attained the status of a tech “unicorn” – a term used to describe private start-ups valued at more than $1bn (\u00a3740m). <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Iona Bain Financial technology company Revolut has been accused of “single-shaming” after its current promotional campaign sparked a backlash on Twitter. The company, which launched in 2015, bills itself as an alternative to banks and offers app-based current accounts. It has been running ads on the London Tube highlighting the number of people … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}