So today I decided to move my 3 business accounts over to my monzo business account, the first 2 went ahead no problem but my 3rd had a sting in its tail, I accidentally entered the incorrect monzo account number so my money went to a random monzo account holder, obviously I called San tander, who told me I’d have to wait until the morning and call back in to speak to the team and hope that my money could be resolved, to get this far cost me over 1hr on wait time and I had 2 phones trying to get to anybody at Santander, not ideal. At the same time I was on chat with a monzo dude, in fairness much as he was quick to answer he couldn’t really help and just told me to contact Santander who would sort it hopefully… Unfortunately, and I kinda understand why but I had hoped that the monzo dude could at least confirm if the account I had sent the money to existed or not but he couldn’t do that, in the end I sent the account holder another 1p from my monzo account and attached my phone number as the note, the guy actually called me and refunded my money… Absolute Diamond, my faith in humanity has been restored… To the guy, if you are reading this… Thank you so so much… 
Wow, salute to the other guy!
And just so you know it was £1200…
Glad you got your money back safely and thank you to the guy for being honest and restoring your faith in humanity <3
And the other person is 1 penny richer too, so happy days for both parties! 
Jokes aside, really glad that it had a positive outcome and that honest people do exist!
Thanks for sharing your experience
A wonderful story! Great outcome. Aces!!
BTW I’m glad the Monzo guy wasn’t willing to discuss someone else’s account with you, in any form! (I realise it didn’t help you and was undoubtedly very annoying at the time!).
The only potential wrinkle now will be if Santander really are doing something to get the transfer reversed when the money has already gone. Hopefully that side will also sort itself out!
Great that two good people managed to fix a problem between themselves. Kind of a shame that Monzo couldn’t do more about it though. Perhaps limited by GDPR etc seeing as it was coming in from another bank?
If that happened to me, in an ideal world I’d expect Monzo COps to look into the payment there and then, freeze the funds if the claimant sounds legit and send a message to the recipient asking for confirmation that they’ve received a payment by mistake. If they don’t reply in good time with a reason for having the money then refund it to the sender.
That of course is with my zero understanding of the regulatory framework or agreed practises. If @Rika or friends would care to enlighten as to how it works in practise then I’ll gladly sit back down 
GDPR, Data Protection etc etc.
Computer says no.
Also great that Monzo allows you to send messages along with transfers - you wouldn’t have been able to do that with an old bank!
Yeah, I fully understand the why behind it, but to confirm if it was an active account would have been good, cos what I actually sent the penny with my contact details was in theory to establish quickly if the account actually existed as because it being monzo 2 monzo the penny would have bounced straight back to me and therefore letting me know if the account existed… But I fully get them not disclosing the info…
Sadly I’m more cynical than the other guy who refunded, and my first thought would be that it was some sort of scam, or money laundering which it could well have been.
I’m pleased you got your money back and of course I’d have no hesitation in (eventually) refunding, but I’d be doing a lot of checks before I sent a random stranger £1200 which had just appeared in my account.
What this needed was someone at Monzo who could own the situation and was able to communicate with a similar person at Santander.
You were lucky.
P.S.
I always send a small amount first to test I have the correct credentials.
I agree to an extent - I definitely wouldn’t send it back to OP at his Monzo account, but I don’t see a problem wirh sending it back whence it came.
Worth noting that it is an offence to knowingly keep the money once aware, so that wasn’t an option after the phone call (good thought!) if not before.
Lovely story.
However, the bigger issue here is the lack of protection to account holders who simply mistype. Such a small mistake, such big consequences. How can security conscious banks have such a shallow system of checks and balances. This is not aimed at Monzo (who were not implicated in this story), but at the banking industry as whole (which was my main career for 22 years).
There are moves to address this by require an account name to be included in the transaction details and to match the name to the number, but really there also is a need for a facility to undo a transfer within a short timeframe, without penalty. It still wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be a big improvement…and I can’t really see any downsides, because we are used to having to wait for monies to clear, in any event.
This could be a fraudster’s dream (exchange goods and payment and then undo the payment afterwards), however I totally agree something needs to be done.
Even the ability to force a freeze on the funds you’ve just sent would be a godsend to some people, then at least they’d have the ability to raise a dispute and state their case, rather than just being left in the dark and being told they’re a fool for making a simple error, then leaving it all up to the receiver of the wrong payment to decide whether they’ll be a good samaritan or do a runner with the money.
Having heard all about the huge undertaking across the industry and all the missed deadlines that is going into something as simple as verifying the name on a payee’s account, I fear it would be another 10 or more years for the industry to implement something as difficult as an ‘undo’ or ‘freeze’ feature.
I’m sure it would be a lot quicker if the regulator had some teeth they were willing to use, and made the banks equally liable for errors.
Can’t the Banks “freeze” the miss-sent funds if you call before those funds have been spent? I’m sure I’ve seen instances where the receiving bank, once a complaint has been raised have actually stopped the account being used to allow for the solution to be resolved.
Admittedly, I’m not sure where or why I think this but it seems strange that a bank can “freeze” an account for MLR or POCA reasons but not when funds are miss-sent.
Either way, I check the account number and sort code about 10 times before I send any money (even if it is like £5) just to be sure - this is where Monzo is helping with Monzo to Monzo payments being so easy and the request payment links you can send.
Yes, I did wonder about that, but I decided that at least you were already in a legal contractual relationship with that person and you have already made a choice to trust that person. That is a very different scenario to the one contained in story with whom the account holder has no relationship at all.
In essence I made a balance judgement, but I am open to any discussion that adds extra protection to the account holder.
I don’t really disagree with your suggestion, although a “freeze” would mean that the recipient would be unable to close the account until the dispute was closed. This probably wouldn’t be an issue for a sole account, but it could be damaging where someone was trying to escape an abusive relationship…it happens more than you might think. It happened to someone close to me, and since then (because I have been talking about it) a number of people have reported similar problems.
Your final paragraph, I don’t see that happening. Like the good capitalists that they are, Banks expend quite a lot of effort in avoiding or evading responsibility for their failings. Back when ATMs were new, they went full on denial that ghost withdrawals were possible, pleading that their systems were failproof. And that has pretty much been their default setting for things going wrong. Commercially, they are chronically conservative in developing their business models. Which is one of the reasons I am here on Monzo.
Left to their own devices, you are probably right about how long it will take. I have a Coop bank account, too. Their phone app was dire. They spent months heralding their new, upcoming app, completely rebuilt from the ground up. It arrived late and visually and functionally unchanged except it now accepted fingerprint login.
I am hoping challenger banks like Monzo will shake the market up and cause established banks to up their game. Not holding my breath, though.
There is a voluntary code of practice in place and I know the Co-Op Bank and I think RBS changed their terms and conditions last year to accommodate taking money from your account if incorrectly credited.
As you do, I overly check each number multiple times in batches of 2. Hasn’t failed me yet.
Under normal circumstances when transfering money i do tend to send a £1 test first, for whatever reason I overlooked this step on this occasion. Lesson learned I think.
My tip is: enter them into the boxes normally, then read them back to check backwards. The numbers look less familiar and it requires more concentration to go from right-to-left so you’re less likely to misread/skim over familiar looking groups of digits.