Help! Anyone know anything about international money transfers!?

Neodr31

First I'd just like to say that if I have posted this in the wrong forum I am very sorry, it's not a subject which fit easily into any of the main forum categories!

Ok, let me try and find a quick and easy way to write this. Basically, I tried to send a deposit for a house in Germany via an internet transfer but (perhaps stupidly) assumed the bank branch was in the same city as the headquarters of the housing association and thus got the incorrect BIC code. I have the IBAN correct and of course the name of the company, and the BIC code corresponds to the same bank but simply the wrong branch.

From what I understand the IBAN code contains within it the bank sort code (BLZ in Germany) as well as the account number and so surely the branch can be deduced from the section of the IBAN which shows the BLZ (Sort code)? The money has left my account and I have contacted the bank several times but they (typically) say they can do nothing untill they can trace the money which can take a while.

Of course the best solution to this would be for the money to get to the correct account but I would also be content if the money simply got bounced back to my account. My main worry is that the money has gone into someone else's account. So I guess my main questions are:

If the IBAN was correct, will it matter that the BIC is incorrect because the IBAN contains information about the branch?

And if the IBAN and BIC do not match will the money simply get bounced back to me rather than transfered into someone else's account? I guess another way to put this is to ask whether IBAN's are specific to a certain account? Or can they be recycled at different BIC codes, much like British account numbers are recycles at different sort codes?

Thank you so much for any replies, this is really playing on my mind at the moment and I've seen lots of good advice about transfers on this forum before so thought it was worth a shot!

markbodega

BIC codes can either consist of 8 characters or 11 characters. 8 characters represent the head office and 11 characters represent the individual branch. You often find that individual branches are not set up to receive payment traffic and all transactions are generally routed via the main head office. You can check to see whether the BIC/SWIFT code is connected to the SWIFT platform by searching https://www2.swift.com/directories/ and following ‘BIC search light’.

It is quite possible that the payment was routed successfully and one way to check is by asking the sending bank for a copy of the MT103 message. This is the associated SWIFT message sent relating to the payment and will identify whether the payment was in fact routed successfully. If the SWIFT code is invalid you may want to check that the payment was in fact sent and did not fail.

If the individual branch can successfully receive International payments, you would have expected them to have internally rectified the payment error. Alternatively, they may have rejected the payment. As you have not quoted any other account information relating to another account holder, the funds should not be applied to another account.

With regards to tracing the payments, it is the responsibility of the sending bank. Banks generally have SLA’s of around 48 hours for these to be actioned, so this is where the lengthy timescale comes from. It is as simple as one bank sending another bank an electronic SWIFT message and awaiting a response – there is no reason this can not be same day, although is highly unlikely. Another option, if the funds are still pending with the wrong branch, is to arrange for a SWIFT message to be sent requesting for the payment details to be amended.

Hope this helps

Mark
HiFX