Not an article about Bitcoin: "I accidentally sent £1,000 to the wrong account"

[odolvlobo]

People complain that if bitcoins are mistakenly sent to the wrong address, the transaction can't be undone. It turns out that fiat has the same problem.

I accidentally sent £1,000 to the wrong bank account but Barclays cannot recover the money as it's been spent - what can I do?

    I transferred some money to someone who was doing some work in my garden and unknowingly - and rather stupidly - managed to get the account number wrong.
    With hindsight I should probably have transferred a smaller value as a test, but instead sent £1,000.
...
    After two days I gave Barclays a call and managed to speak to someone. They advised the transfer had been successful and I needed to contact the man I had intended to send the money to, giving him a reference number, which was at least 20 digits long.

    I did this, but he came back after visiting his own bank, stating he was told there was nothing that could be done and the onus was on me to chase it with my own bank.
...
    George Nixon, This is Money, replies: Whether it's due to fat fingers or because we're distracted by something else, accidentally sending money to the wrong person happens frequently after inputting incorrect bank details.
...
    In a letter sent to you by Barclays, it added the next option is making a legal claim against the customer you accidentally sent the money to, and recommended if you do that you obtain independent legal advice.

[pixie85]

I had that once and the bank cancelled the payment. I made a mistake in the IBAN but put the right name and address, which did not match the credentials on the IBAN.

It's unfortunate that the bank cannot sent the money back and charge the account that spent it. Many banks do it because just 1 wrong number makes the money go to a completely different person. Banks were supposed to be better than crypto due to reversability of transactions.

[Findingnemo]

Banks were supposed to be better than crypto due to the reversibility of transactions.

Banks will say its not our fault so you have to make a legal claim but there is a little chance with banking transactions but in cryptos its not possible because we can never get the identity of the person who received the crypto funds.

Reversing a bank transaction after being spent is also not practical for smaller amount like few hundred dollars because we may have to spend more money than the actual money to get them to be reversed for all the expenses.

[bL4nkcode]

Well, that's one of the problems in sending money were mostly prone to human errors whether its a local remittance, digital wallets, bitcoin/crypto even in paypal, once you input a wrong info and tap the send button it cannot be undone. There's always a warning message where something is written to double check the details before you send the money because it cannot be undone.

[joniboini]

The difference between fiat and bitcoin is that fiat as an ecosystem has a lot of different players with a different set of rules on how they handle reverse/mistake in payment. I think it's quite unfair to say that 'fiat is like this everywhere', but at the same time this could happen.

Crypto or a decentralized system like bitcoin is more 'punishing' because they give you so much freedom, which is why people should learn on how to deal with that responsibility before doing new stuff without understanding.

[yazher]

I had the same experience when I sent some money to a different user of Gcash, thankfully, the system refunds it back because the number I sent my money with, does not exist. maybe it's the bank or their system has different rules when it comes to wrong transaction details. as for me, I got it back with no problems but it took 2-3 days for the money to come back.

[Yogee]

Aren't banks suppose to match the recipients name and account number first before approving the transfer? That is one advantage of a centralized payment system over decentralized cryptocurrencies.

[cryptoaddictchie]

People complain that if bitcoins are mistakenly sent to the wrong address, the transaction can't be undone. It turns out that fiat has the same problem.

Not true in our country. But a vivid investigation is a must in order to claim mistakes have been really by accident. For example, the mistake was due to one or two incorrect account number of banks, like the last two or last letter is wrong but the account number is almost same, I think that's a valid claim to be mistake and banks should refund it. But not all the cases like that. Unlike blockchain its totally cant do this refund thing so your mistake your fault. Decentralized has advantage of being transparency but we cant deny that it has disadvantage like this issue.

[avikz]

In banking system, you still have something called "banking ombudsman" where you can complain about it. There are legal ways that can be undertaken in order to receive the money back. You can also visit the consumer court to correct this mistake! So in banking system, you still have certain hope that this money can be recovered.

In bitcoin, you can't go to anyone if you make such mistake. Once it is gone, it's gone permanently. You can check in blockchain if this money is being spent or not, but you can't do anything!

[xvids]

The difference between crypto and Fiat when it comes to this kind of wrong sent money is we know who received it and we could ask for assistance to get our money back,
Unlike in crypto the receiver is anonymous so there is no chance to retrieve it.

[davis196]

In my country sending money from one bank account to another isn't that easy.You will have to phone verify the transaction by submitting a 6-digit code that you receive via SMS and you are required to double check the bank details(IBAN and BIC/swift code) of the receiving account.I don't know about the bank transaction process in England,but sending money to the wrong bank account in my country isn't a common thing at all.
Anyway,if this is NOT an article about Bitcoin,then why it's in the Bitcoin Discussion forum?You should move it to "Economy" or "Press" sub-forums.

[jseverson]

This sucks, but you at least have access to the identity of the person, and can take them to a small claims court or something. That tells you that this isn't really a problem inherent with Bitcoin, but rather with its pseudonymity. If you sent some coins to someone you actually know by mistake, you might also be able to take them to court provided you can prove that they own the address.

Aren't banks suppose to match the recipients name and account number first before approving the transfer? That is one advantage of a centralized payment system over decentralized cryptocurrencies.

They should, but I'm not sure if this is possible with interbank transfers. Can't really keep it instant if real people have to monitor it.

[Thekool1s]

Hmm, this is interesting... I always thought the chargeback was a simple process and the recipient had no control over it whatsoever... I went on a bit of statistic hunt after reading this, I did find some interesting numbers. A quarter of Vibepay's userbase had accidentally sent money to a wrong account and around 1 out of 10 people had done it last year. The number which surprised me is that 28% of these people never were able to recover their money... Given what @avikz has mentioned that there are certain legal routes which can be taken, I don't know why this figure is that high or can be justified altogether... Do people really don't care about their money? Or was it negligible amounts that weren't worth pursuing... Unfortunately, the stats weren't clear on that... But it still sends a wrong kind of image for the banks if they pride themselves of being safer than bitcoin...

_{Source:
[1] https://www.lovemoney.com/news/91297/sent-money-to-the-wrong-account-get-money-back-after-misdirected-payment}  

[figmentofmyass]

Aren't banks suppose to match the recipients name and account number first before approving the transfer? That is one advantage of a centralized payment system over decentralized cryptocurrencies.

They should, but I'm not sure if this is possible with interbank transfers. Can't really keep it instant if real people have to monitor it.

it can easily be done with intrabank transfers. my bank looks up your transfer request against a last name and account number and if there is no match, you can't make the transfer. that's nearly impossible to screw up.

interbank transfers like bank wires are indeed a whole different ball game. the sending bank has no way to verify the ultimate recipient. they just send a payment request to their correspondent bank and poof, the money is gone.

[hugeblack]

There are similarities and differences, the similarity is that when you send the wrong address to a platform or another person, that person or that platform can get the money back, but you need to give them logical reasons or file a legal case.
The difference: When you send it to an anonymous address, no one will be able to help you and your money will be lost 100%.

[FanatMonet]

Here the situation differs from bank to bank, for example, I know a bank where, in order to return such an incorrect transfer, you need the consent of the person with whom they were credited.
But in general, it is better not to allow such situations, and check the data 2-3 times.

[bearexin]

I don’t think that’s true. When you send money to the wrong account number, banks knows where the money was sent to but due to some kind of privacy concern they don’t reveal it to you and you will have to take some legal actions before the money will be reversed I guess. But, I don’t think rich people or big companies has full access to this.

I can remember that when I stopped working at my former company they mistakenly sent money to my bank account and then they contacted me to send it back, as I was about to do that, somehow they were able to reverse the money by themselves without me doing so yet. So that’s not true, banks can reverse money, but they just don’t want to do it unless you take legal action.

[LTU_btc]

Aren't banks suppose to match the recipients name and account number first before approving the transfer? That is one advantage of a centralized payment system over decentralized cryptocurrencies.

Yes, they are supposed to to do it and they are doing it. Otherwise, we would hear stories like in OP daily, much more often than we face these things in crypto field.
I can speak about these things from my own experience. Once I tried to send money to someone, but he gave me not correct surname, there was spelling mistake. And guess what, money wasn't sent

[bithisach]

I had that once and the bank cancelled the payment. I made a mistake in the IBAN but put the right name and address, which did not match the credentials on the IBAN.

It's unfortunate that the bank cannot sent the money back and charge the account that spent it. Many banks do it because just 1 wrong number makes the money go to a completely different person. Banks were supposed to be better than crypto due to reversability of transactions.

While I disagree that banks are supposed to be better, it's the other way around actually. However, putting 1 digit wrong on bitcoin addresses don't necessarily mean you'll send them to someone else, unlike in banks, copy pasting the wrong address definitely will though. Both cases are easy to avoid imo.

[Stedsm]

How exactly is it possible in today's world to have our ^fiat^ accidentally sent to someone's account? Didn't their bank ask for the name of the beneficiary before letting them send the money to that person? Chasing down someone just on the basis of account number? Is that possible? Reversal of funds wasn't possible in his case?