Transferred money and closed account before transfer was confirmed

Help
1

Hey!

I made a transfer of £4000 yesterday from our Monzo joint account to our Virgin Money account.

I advised Monzo of the transfer in advance.

The transfer was via the faster payment service, and when I checked the Virgin Money account yesterday it was showing as an incoming transfer.

I have checked the Virgin Money account this morning and the funds haven’t cleared.

The problem is that I closed our Monzo joint account yesterday so have no idea where the money is.

I have messaged Monzo and they have said I will get a response in 8 hours!

Has anyone experienced this before? A little worried that the money just seems to have disapeared.

Thanks!

2

Why did you close your account before you verified your transfer was complete?

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3

That’s a good question. Naivety I guess. As it was showing on Virgin as an incoming payment i thought that had meant the transfer was cleared.

Not a mistake I’ll make again.

4

This is because you closed the account before the money was actually even transferred so it canceled & reversed the payment as it gets classed as declined but since you don’t have your account it can’t be returned to you.

You’ve temporarily lost the funds and it’ll need investigation which can take a week or so in my experience

5

Usually when a payment has cleared it’ll actually be in the account rather than showing as incoming, when a payment shows as incoming it just means a payment has been arranged but not processed by either end.

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6

Was it a fast payment or BACS?

Seems very unusual given that FPS is normally instant, And I know from experience of transferring from Monzo to virgin this is the case

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7

Thank you, that make sense.

Usually when I make a transfer by FPS is clears instantly, in this case I closed the account a number of hours after.

I guess I just need to wait for Monzo to look in to this then.

The 8 hour response time does seem poor, if I call HSBC for example it’s instant support.

8

It also looks incredibly suspicious to empty an account and instantly close it.

You’ll get your money but it will take a while for them to investigate it.

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9

Yes, faster payment

10

Hi Revels

I notified Monzo of what I was doing beforehand

11

It’ll be longer than that imo.

It needs a deep investigation and the 8 hour will just be for a response which could ask for evidence that you haven’t received the funds or even the reason you closed the account instead of switching.

As stated above it looks fishy. You could be laundering for all they know.

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12

That doesn’t really matter.

Telling a CS rep you’ll do something won’t circumvent all their other money safety protocols, for obvious reasons.

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13

Ah OK- was just following some guidance from this community before making the transfer.

14

What kind of guidance and did you tell them you was gonna close the account as soon as you transferred?

15

You don’t need to tell them you’re making a transfer unless it exceeds the limits, which it didn’t so you’re fine.

The issue is you closed the account before the money got there.

It’s probably come back and it’s now in limbo.

16

It’s an insane amount of money. Why didn’t you use CASS/Switch since you was closing the account anyway?

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18

Remember we’re all just guessing here so what will happen will happen. I don’t recall seeing this scenario come up here before so unless someone’s experienced it for themselves we have very little data to work with regarding what to expect.

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19

I had read a number of posts that advising Monzo if making a transfer that isn’t just a couple of hundred £ to avoid chance of an account being frozen. If that’s poor advice, that’s fine, doesn’t do any harm anyway.

I advised Monzo about the transfer and closing the account, yes.

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20

I won’t lie as an armchair observer this sounds very suspicious to me.

If you did a faster payment the payment should’ve been instant (I assume unless Monzo flagged it before the transfer was complete).

I’ve looked inside my virgin money account and I can’t see where you would see an incoming transaction. It’s either there or it’s not

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21

With HSBC I make larger transfers quite regularly and without issue.

I would really only use a switching service if moving multiple direct debit etc.

I don’t feel £4000 is an insane amount