Revolut international transfer

chris_woods_2 · 22 March 2017 at 4:45PM

In general I am delighted with the facilities offered by my fairly newly acquired Revolut card and it has been working great as a multi currency credit card as well as for ATM withdrawals.

A few weeks ago I thought I would try to pay a bill to an individual beneficiary in Grenada - he said if I wanted to pay in USD (rather then Eastern Caribbean Dollars) I should use an intermediary account held at Bank of America in Miami - I set up the account details (name, account number and ABA Routing) and after setting the USD amount pressed the Revolut button. A week later I checked if the payment had been received - and it hadn't - we left it a further week but still no sign.

Revolut were very slow in providing assistance via the app but in the end they sent me a receipt from their UK based payment processor partner called "CurrencyCloud" .The receipt showed the same information as my original payment instruction to Revolut but still the payment hadn't arrived and the receipt didn't really help

I pressed Revolut further and they eventually gave me a trace reference number (obtained from CurrencyCloud) and asked me to contact Bank of America to find out what had happened to the payment - Bank of America didn't recognise the trace number or the bank account number and the funds seem to have vanished into a black hole

Revolut tell me they can't help and its up to me to find out where the transfer has gone and to ask Back of America to locate and refund to CurrencyCloud and Revlout and thus my account

It further emerges the payment was made as a local ACH transaction (local USD to USD) and not an International SWIFT wire transfer (GBP to USD) and there is therefore no way to send a SWIFT message to cancel - I am lost for a way forward

Any assistance or guidance appreciated

eDicky · 22 March 2017 at 5:48PM

chris_woods wrote: »

I should use an intermediary account held at Bank of America in Miami - I set up the account details (name, account number and ABA Routing)

Bank of America didn't recognise the trace number or the bank account number

Does the beneficiary themself hold this account in their name, or is it 'for further benefit' to them at another bank (as you call it an intermediary account)? If the latter, how exactly did you enter those details into Revolut?

What bank account number did BoA not recognise - the BoA one that your beneficiary supplied to you?

chris_woods_2 · 24 March 2017 at 4:32PM

The beneficiary doesnt hold this Bank of America account themselves but they told me to use it for USD transfers - the beneficiary holds an account in Grenada with Coop Bank of Grenada who confirm the Bank of America account is used by them for USD payments. In the end it seems I should not have used this intermediary account and ABA routing number since its probably an internal USD processing number and not owned by the beneficiary (maybe its Coop Bank of Grenada) but Revolut and their payment processor have made a local ACH transfer where I can't insist they use a SWIFT message to issue a recall ?

I can't quite understand why Bank of America can't find the reference account and my payment transfer but maybe I am not speaking to the right department - I have spoken to local ACH team as well as International (SWIFT) wire transfer team/s with no joy in either >?

eDicky · 24 March 2017 at 9:28PM

This type of arrangement is quite common, where a beneficiary holds an account at their local bank, and that local bank have their own USD account with an American bank, where their USD funds are held. So to send USD to them it must go to the local bank's account at the American bank, but with a second layer of instruction 'for further credit to' (the beneficiary account details) etc. Revolut and most currency transfer brokers cannot be used for this sort of thing, as the complete information cannot be correctly entered. If you just put the beneficiary's name to the account at the American intermediary bank account, it's not correct. Sending it from your own bank directly, with the complete details required, is usually the only reliable way. It's also possible that your beneficiary did not give you the complete or correct details, and is at least in part responsible.

So now there's the problem of tracing the transfer. I have occasionally had a transfer I sent with Revolut declined by the recipient's bank, but when I report it's failure to arrive Revolut can see what happened and immediately credit the full amount back to me - so presumably it's not so simple in this case, the payment was not declined and has been received... somewhere....

It will have arrived as a local transfer (SWIFT is not involved) from 'The Currency Cloud', not from your name. I still don't know what you entered as account name and account number. If it was the beneficiary's name it will not match the Coop Bank of Grenada's account number at BoA. It may actually be credited to CBG's account at BoA, but without indication of further credit to your beneficiary's name.... etc... I am only guessing. You have to figure out what's likely according to what you entered, and get on to both BoA and CBG with the details you gave and the Currency Cloud origin in the hope of some result. I also don't understand why BoA don't recognise the account number of the CBG account with them, if that's what you entered correctly in the Revolut instruction (I tried to ask you before). Also you could ask your beneficiary to attack it from his end with the relevant details given. Don't give up....!

chris_woods_2 · 26 March 2017 at 8:43PM

Just to clarify - the Bank of America account and ABA routing numbers on my Revolut instruction were as advised by the beneficiary - I used the beneficiary name plus the intermediary bank account and ABA routing but clearly (now) the Bank of America account number was not held by him - so it should have failed - as above, the Bank of America person I spoke to doesn't recognise the account number but maybe I am speaking to the wrong department and perhaps a USD routing account number isnt generally available to the telephone help line

Also it turns out that Currency Cloud dont have their own banking licence and in this case used a 3rd party in the US to make the local ACH transfer - I dont know who it was and both Currency Cloud and Revolut are reluctant to tell me - if I can find out who it was and somehow get through to the right person at Bank of America, maybe I can find the payment sitting waiting for someone to make a decision on what to do

In general I can't really believe Revolut dont want to play any part in helping to find the funds and seem to be saying its all my responsibility - they say they are just acting as a 3rd party processor under my instruction - whether the FSA or the Financial Ombudsman would agree might be my next step

Thanks a lot for engaging

eDicky · 27 March 2017 at 11:10AM

It seems to be as I suspected - your beneficiary has given you incorrect/incomplete instructions for sending the money, causing you to instruct Revolut with a beneficiary's name and address and an account number at BoA that don't match. But BoA have somehow accepted this payment despite the error. So I can't suggest much more than I have already. Revolut / Currency Cloud seem to be the only innocent party, having made the payment as instructed, and it's quite possible that, unlike a 'proper' bank using SWIFT, they are unable to do anything to chase it up.

Services such as Revolut/Currency Cloud and other FX brokers always use local transfers, such as ACH in this case, thus avoiding the normal cost of an international SWIFT or wire transfer. The money only moves in their internal accounting.

The ABA routing number is used to identify American bank branches, similar to the UK sort code - it does not identify a particular account.

chris_woods wrote: »

Coop Bank of Grenada who confirm the Bank of America account is used by them for USD payments.

chris_woods wrote: »

the Bank of America person I spoke to doesn't recognise the account number

Does this mean that Coop Bank confirm that their account number at BoA, as given to and used by you for the transfer, is correct? Yet at BoA this account number is not recognised, ie doesn't exist? This is something that needs to be clarified. I think that your beneficiary should take responsibility and get on to Coop Bank about this - the money may well be sitting in their account at BoA, unidentified without the 'further credit' instruction. And if the account number is correct you should be able to insist with BoA that they trace what happened to this payment, which they actually received as it was not declined. It would probably be more appropriate to involve the US regulators than the UK ones in any escalation.

jonesMUFCforever · 27 March 2017 at 7:25PM

There is a saying you get what you paid for.
A proper bank would have been able to send a message to the receiving bank to help sort this out.

eDicky · 27 March 2017 at 8:48PM

For any transfer that's not totally straightforward, the likes of Revolut should not be used - and it would not be possible to use them because only simple instructions can be given.

As I see it, if the beneficiary had given complete instructions the OP would have needed to use a paid service or bank to send it. If it were me, I might be inclined to tell the beneficiary that I'd sent the money according to the details he gave, as far as I was concerned I'd paid him and he can chase it himself. (However, I would have suspected the details were wrong anyway.)

chris_woods_2 · 24 April 2017 at 4:10PM

.... a final positive update - after many weeks going through the in app support process I finally got referred to a senior manager at Revolut responsible for their international bank payment process and he kindly made enquiries of Bank of America and also Coop Bank in Grenada and finally uncovered the money sitting in the corporate account of the Grenada Coop bank with a query on the target account name - hooray - the Coop bank accepted to refund the payment and its now back in my Revolut account - on that basis Revolut have returned to top of my favourite international payment multi currency pre paid card/s

eDicky · 24 April 2017 at 5:08PM

So it was in the Coop Bank of Grenada's account at the Bank of America, but with your beneficiary named as account holder instead of CBG..?

Revolut international transfer

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