A Wire Transfer Mistake and the Following Events

[adrian.jecan]

Jurisdiction

Asia

Hello,

I have an issue with a wire transfer which doesn't seem either fair or legal, from my point of view, but I want to check the legal part with someone entitled.

I made an international bank transfer to a bank in China, in USD. The initial mistake from where all started, was the fact that the recipient name had a very very long name and my banking app has a character limit for this, so I filled in basically the entire recipient name (very long) without the Co,Ltd. at the end. I didn't think this will be a problem.

Anyway, after one week of not receiving the money, my recipient checked with the bank and they actually received my transfer in the very next day but because in China the banks require that recipient name match exactly the name of the account holder, they didn't put the money in the recipient's account. Ok, fair enough, I understand this.

The problem was that they neither rejected the transfer nor announced any of the parties. So basically they just kept the money and if my recipient wouldn't check with them, they wouldn't say or do anything about that. So because of these, I have a delay with the payment and I have to pay some fees to my recipient because of this. But anyway, this is the consequence of what happened.

What I want to know is, if it is legal what they did because I guess there are international laws to which all the banks from anywhere in the world have to join and obey.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

 

[army judge]

Sorry, this website discusses the laws of the USA and her states.
None of our responders knows Asian laws, or the laws of Romania.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

If you're talking about banking services such as payments and transfer of money, the first place you should be reviewing legal terms is your bank's service agreement. I have a good degree of confidence that you'll find that it is the transferror's responsibility to enter the legal name of the recipient properly and in full. What if you didn't have space to enter a complete Chinese bank account number because your banking app only had room for one too few digits?

So while I can't give you any solid legal opinion, I'd say that it's likely that the responsibility for the error may remain with yourself. Next time, if an app isn't sufficient, use another method which is for your banking services.