I went to the bank, filled out a page, signed and got my money back instantly.
Common sense would dictate I was a victim of fraud. But my bank (Wells Fargo) decided to close my lone bank account of 5 years for "suspicious activity."
https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_b...
What makes you think these transactions can be reversed? In the U.K. most inter-bank transactions are non-reversible for a whole host of reasons. When a bank “reverses” a transaction, what that usually means is they sent an email to the receiving bank to pretty please send the money back. There’s 50/50 odds the receiving bank still has the money and is interested in helping you.
https://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/sites/default/files/Pay.UK...
If the person receiving the money has moved it on, then it gone, FPS BER won’t save you. No receiving institution is going to voluntarily take on liability for another banks fuck up. At best they help you recover the money because the scheme makes them be helpful, but that’s no guarantee of actual recovery.
> o receiving institution is going to voluntarily take on liability for another banks fuck up.
That's not how liability works at all...
If a large amount of money is erroneously deposited into your account, you don't get to keep it. Returning the money doesn't make you "liable" for anything, it's the opposite. If you spend that money, then you're going to have to pay it back, and if you can't, then you can end up in prison.
If the person owing the account move illegitimate find out of their account, then there’s nothing the receiving institution can do, they can’t return money no longer on their books. They could return money, and push the account owner into an overdraft, but now they’ve taken on the liability of recovering those funds. No bank is gonna do that voluntarily, especially to cover another banks fuck up.
Now the original sending bank could then ask the receiving bank who took the funds, and the receiving bank will tell the sending bank to come back with a court order, because they have a legal obligation to act in the best interest of their customer, even if they think their customer maybe doing something dodgy. Once the sending bank has rustled up a court order, then the receiving bank will hand over the account owners PII, and the sending bank can attempt to recover the money via the courts.
But a no point is the receiving institution ever going put their neck out to help a sending bank recover incorrectly sent funds. It’s the sending banks problem to use the legal system to both discover who received the funds, and pursue recovery directly from them. They can’t recover the funds from the receiving bank directly if the monies moved on and the account owner refuses to cooperate with the recovery process.
People forget there tends to be a very large gap between the law and its enforcement. Frequently it’s too much effort to actually enforce the law, so large sums just get written off instead.
It's not a message but a file sent from sender to beneficiaries.
If a company accidentally sends lots of people small amounts of money then the loss is balanced against the cost of getting it back by contacting all the people and likely some will be returned and some will be stolen.
If the accidental transfer is really accidental pay then undoing will be complicated/impossible so if the amount is small enough maybe just pay less the following month (if it’s allowed by minimum wage laws?) and write off people who quit before the company is made whole, though this can be complicated if the error happens towards the end of the tax year or because of taxes that are assessed e.g. monthly instead of annually.
[1] there’s a common scam that goes roughly like: 1. Someone sends you ‘too much’ money. 2. They ask you to return the money minus some goodwill payment. 3. They clawback their initial transfer but you can’t claw yours back. So that’s why trying to get the original transfer cancelled is better than trying to return or partially return funds manually.