I have a friend* who has got a couple of digits wrong and transferred some money to someone else’s bank account.
The bank has said the account exists and belongs to someone.
I know credit card numbers have check digits so it’s hard to guess a valid one, but do bank accounts?
To do a transfer in the UK you specify the sort code (I think this is similar to the routing number) which is 6 digits, and then an 8 digit account number. My friend got the last 2 digits of the account number wrong.
I don’t believe we do. I once had two accounts with one bank and the only difference was the last two digits. When I did a BACS transfer a week ago the bank was assiduous in pointing out that the responsibility for ensuring the account numbers etc were accurate was all mine.
It’s ages since I’ve done a direct bank transfer, but I’m fairly sure I needed to know the name of the recipient account holder in addition to the account number and sort code. Am I misremembering?
Nitpick: the check digit in a credit card number intended to detect unintentional mistakes, like transposing two digits or typing one digit incorrectly. It’s not intended to make credit card numbers hard to guess. The check digit is generated by the Luhn algorithm, which is well known, so if someone knew all the digits except the check digit, they could easily calculate the missing digit.
They ask for it, but according to my bank branch it’s not actually checked if you send money online (my rent payment had a typo in the landlord’s name- Brain for Brian- hence the topic coming up).
If you transferred money at the bank counter, I remember tellers checking the name was right, but my bank at least doesn’t appear to have an automated version. Maybe there’s too many false negatives from name variants to really work, or maybe my bank’s just a bit crap. It could maybe be counted as evidence that you didn’t intend to pay the person who actually received the money if they refuse to return it and it turns into a dispute, but I think that’s about it.
At present, the bank does no check to see that the recipient’s name matches the account to which the money is being transferred. This is how the so-called ‘push’ frauds operate. The criminals convince someone to transfer money from their account to a name they trust, but a new number; the bank doesn’t check so the money disappears. The bank then says - "Not our problem; you sent the money so it’s down to you. There are new rules being introduced to match a/c No’s with names that should put a stop to this.
A couple of years ago I transferred some money to someone by mistake. There was no fraud, just a mix-up between two similar names. The bank said there was nothing they could do since I had authorised the transaction. Luckily for me, the person involved gave me the money back when asked.