SWIFT payment gone missing

Band7

Question to banking experts who can help with a payment from UK bank A to UK bank B that has gone missing. Which bank is responsible for locating the money?

Some details about the transaction:

• sending and receiving account both in my name; payment requested online by myself
• payee details have been stored with bank A for a couple of years, and have been used without any problems at least two dozen times
• high 3-figure sum which was meant to arrive in bank B on February 6 2023 has still not arrived in bank B
• bank A shows the debit on February 6 2023
• bank A says everything looks fine their end and has provided me with a TRN number which they said I need to give to bank B
• bank B says they can't do anything with the TRN number and that it is the sending bank's responsibility to trace the payment
• bank A has now provided me with an MT103 message which is gobbledegook to me, and have told me I need to give this to bank B. I feel I am being given the runabout....and I have not gone to bank B with the MT103 but instead have now raised a formal complaint with bank A

So as above, which bank is responsible for finding my money? Any other tips for what I could do, other than wait for the complaint to work its way through bank A's processes?


EDIT 10/02/23: the original thread title read "Faster payment gone missing". It has now transpired that the payment wasn't sent as a Faster Payment but as a SWIFT payment. It did go missing, all the same, though......and some of it has been found in the meantime. Details in the thread, and I have edited the thread title to reflect the fact that since transpired.

EDIT 04/03/2023: The saga has finally been completed, details throughout the thread. All money credited back eventually to bank A, from where I have withdrawn my balance in cash (luckily their daily ATM limit id £1,000). Reason for the failure remain a mystery. Bank A is Fineco, bank B Santander UK. Neither of them have been particularly helpful. I would no longer recommend anyone uses Fineco to transfer Euros to a UK bank.

Middle_of_the_Road

In recent transaction list for bank A. Showing as Paid or Pending?
I've just had a payment held up, as pending, for fraud checks.

grumbler

Band7 said:

• payee details have been stored with bank A for a couple of years, and have been used without any problems at least two dozen times
• high 3-figure sum which was meant to arrive in bank B on February 6 2023 has still not arrived in bank B
• bank B shows the debit on February 6 2023
• ...

Bank A?

AFAIK, if TRN doesn't work, it's the sending bank that has to handle this.

flaneurs_lobster

I've been away from interbank messaging for a few years but isn't an MT103 used for international / cross-border fund transfers?

noh

flaneurs_lobster said:

I've been away from interbank messaging for a few years but isn't an MT103 used for international / cross-border fund transfers?

That is the case. Used for SWIFT transfers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT103

Band7

Middle_of_the_Road said:

In recent transaction list for bank A. Showing as Paid or Pending?
I've just had a payment held up, as pending, for fraud checks.

shows as paid, and bank A claims it has been sent ok.

Band7

grumbler said:

Band7 said:

• payee details have been stored with bank A for a couple of years, and have been used without any problems at least two dozen times
• high 3-figure sum which was meant to arrive in bank B on February 6 2023 has still not arrived in bank B
• bank B shows the debit on February 6 2023
• ...

Bank A?

AFAIK, if TRN doesn't work, it's the sending bank that has to handle this.

Yes, sorry, bank A.

Not sure what you mean by "if TRN doesn't work"

Ballard

flaneurs_lobster said:

I've been away from interbank messaging for a few years but isn't an MT103 used for international / cross-border fund transfers?

An MT103 is used for payments, domestic & international, where the beneficiary is an individual/corporate. 

Ballard

It’s the sending banks responsibility to investigate. If there is a mistake on the MT103 there’s a good chance that the receiving bank won’t have any notification of the transaction at all.

It’s years since I’ve used an MT103 but you should see the beneficiary account number and name in field 59 (towards the bottom of the message). Directly above that should be field 57 which should be the bank where that account is held. This is likely to be in the form of a BIC, e.g. NWBKGB2LX123.

Payments do sometime go astray but you should get the money at some point and it’s also quite feasible that it’s been held up for fraud/anti money laundering checks. 

Band7

I can decipher the correct BIC of the receiving bank after field 57. I can also decipher my IBAN after field 59 but there is a blank before the last digit of my IBAN. No idea whether that blank is meant to be there, or whether this has caused a problem. 

Thanks for confirming it’s the sending bank who is responsible for investigating. They are proving to be extraordinarily difficult and have now suggested they could recall the payment. Not sure how they think this would help, as I sent the money to bank B for a reason. It’s an odd amount that I couldn’t withdraw at an ATM, and they have no branches where I could withdraw cash, so the only way to get money out of bank A is by bank transfer. This has worked fine for the last couple of years but now I have this hassle. I will be closing my account with bank A once my money has arrived in bank B. 

flaneurs_lobster

Band7 said:

I can decipher the correct BIC of the receiving bank after field 57. I can also decipher my IBAN after field 59 but there is a blank before the last digit of my IBAN. No idea whether that blank is meant to be there, or whether this has caused a problem. 

The blank in the IBAN field is unlikely to be the cause of any problem, it's far more likely to be an artifact caused by copying the message from their system into a printable format that they can show to you. An IBAN has check digits at positions 3-4 and if the IBAN was corrupted somehow it would blow all standard validation.