Recover Money Lost Due to Wrong IFSC Code

Loosing money due to negligence, when one enters a wrong IFSC code, while using bank's online fund transfer facility is quite common. Question is how to recover the lost money and bring it back into your bank account.

It usually happens with people who use the online banking quite frequently. It might sound strange but those who use it once in a while are extra careful while entering the fund transfer codes. Frequent users do become careless. Most time their auto form fillers fill forms for them and it is quite common, actually is a habit, to accept what these auto-form-fillers fill in online forms. Since there can be many different bank accounts and many IFSC codes that a user might have used in the past it is not surprising that so many people end up entering wrong information in their inter-bank fund transfer forms.

Entering a wrong information could mean a direct loss of hard earned money. I say 'could mean' not 'it means' because most times even after entering wrong bank's branch code there is no loss of money. This might sound strange to some of the readers but you have to use a bit of logic here.

Let's suppose that one enters a wrong Indian Financial System Code while using NEFT or RTGS money transfer using online banking and hits a submit button on the form. Will he loose his money?
Many people would think - he will, because the online banking system do warn users that if they enter wrong info the bank won't be responsible for any loss of money. Thus it is easy to draw the inference from that statement that if we end up furnishing wrong information in fund transfer form then "our money is gone". But this doesn't happen very often, thankfully so. This is because for the inter bank transaction to be successful all the pieces of information should be correct. Funds will be transferred to other bank account only if both IFSC code and account number to which the money is to be deposited exist together. In simple words a remitter will loose his money, even after entering wrong information, only if the branch with the unintended IFSC code also has the account number which is provided to get the money transferred. In most cases, when you do enter it wrong, only one of  the two will be correct. Thus the bank's system will fail to transfer money and the money will be credited back to remitter's account due to failed transaction. The only loss of money will be due to service charges imposed by bank in rendering you the inter-bank transfer facility, in this case.



But even  when the probability of things to happen is low - things do happen. Suppose, due to real bad luck  (apart from your negligence) the money gets transferred to wrong branch. Is there any way to recover it? What one needs to do in such a situation?  What steps one should take? Is there anyway to get the money back?

Answer to above question is 'yes'. Anything is possible, and nothing is impossible. But you will have to pray and sweat a lot, because you'll need to do lot of running, from bank to bank, home to bank, and sometimes to police station as well.

Recovering money in such cases is indeed very very difficult. To start off it is your negligence and hence no one else is responsible for any any losses that you incur. You can't complain the bank that it is because of their faulty system that you ended up being a troubled man.  The fault is entirely yours. And don't even think of going to police station at first since you will be seen as some 'real fraud' who is claiming the money deposited into someone else's account as if it is his own.

To get your money back you'll entirely have to be dependent on the other party. The other person into whose account you have ended up transferring your money.  You'll get the information about the account holder by visiting the branch whose code you entered. Usually banks don't share such information with third person, especially if a third person doesn't have account in that bank, but you have to put your case in front of bank's staff and hope they believe you (that's why I asked you to pray before you go out to recover your money) and provide info about the account holder. To make your case strong you can tell exactly the amount you wrongly transferred and at what date you did so.

Remember that bank doesn't know that whether it was a 'wrongly transferred money' or 'rightly transferred money', and hence don't expect that they will take action and transfer the amount back to your bank account. In fact, just imagine if banks start doing this. People pay for availing service from third party and then go to bank and claim that they transferred it by mistake and bank's start giving them back. It won't happen, and thankfully so.

The final word here would come from the third person himself. It all depends on him. If you are able to get his address from bank - just go and meet him. Ask him to check his bank account and say that -- "this much amount is transferred by me to your account by mistake". Then it depends upon what type of person he is. If he is honest, a good person - he will recognize that he has received an unintended amount in his account and will agree to give it back to you. If he does so - you can give him some rupees as a 'thank you amount'. On the other hand, if he is one of those, like many of those, who just love money coming to their way - in whatever way, right or wrong way, he will not even hear you. He might shout at you and shoo you away from his house. Then there is nothing you can do to recover your money.

If you don't get your money back - don't be so sad about it. Remember it was your mistake that caused all this trouble. You made a wholehearted attempt to recover it, and that's all you can do. Sometimes we need to pay for our negligence and that's what we should understand, and learn from it. Never be in any hurry to enter your bank's IFSC codes or any other bank related data.