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I paid off my credit card that had a balance of over $5,000. I sent a one time payment for the total amount, about $5,100 to be exact and my credit card company received the payment and reflected it on my balance to show $0. I called them and they did in fact receive the payment but the money never left my checking account. It’s been nearly two months and the money is still in my bank account and the card is paid off.

I called my bank and they said they do not show a payment on my account for that amount ever but the credit card company received a payment from my bank. What should I do? I’m afraid to spend the money now. Should I just wait a few more months?

EDIT: Thanks for the responses. For clarification, I had been making payments on this credit card for over a year with the same account and all of those payments were fine. I never changed my bank information on Discovers website and made this payment with the same account like always, Discover received it, but it never came out of my account.

RonJohn
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Vaden C
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    Did you pay by telling the bank to send the money or by telling the CC company to take the money? And are the bank and CC different institutions? – DJohnM Jan 11 '21 at 19:19
  • @DJohnM given that it's a Discover card, almost certainly it was a different bank. (Also, i've never heard of telling one bank to send money to another bank.) – RonJohn Jan 12 '21 at 05:32
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    @RonJohn You never heard of a bank having a "pay my bills" feature? – David Schwartz Jan 12 '21 at 11:47
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    @DavidSchwartz I was thinking more of telling in the form of calling up your bank and telling them to pay another bank's CC. But bill pay and ACH certainly do exist. – RonJohn Jan 12 '21 at 14:33
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    Have you called back your CC to explain that the money has not come out of your account yet? This should trigger a red flag for them to check if the bank details are correct. – MonkeyZeus Jan 12 '21 at 15:42
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    So that's what Monopoly means when they say there was a bank error in your favor. – DonQuiKong Jan 12 '21 at 21:07
  • Banks *never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lose.* End of story. If a bank goes bankrupt, they have a government bail them out; regarding disputes with customers, no bank has ever, ever lost one - ever. You will lose. After *twenty years* they will hunt you down for this, with interest and penalties. Banks never, ever, ever lose. I would seriously almost consider getting legal help (at your expense) at this point, as this could end very badly (for you, not the bank). – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 12:33
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    @Fattie that's quite an overstatement. – jcaron Jan 14 '21 at 14:45
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    Can you clarify exactly how you made that payment? Did you use your bank's system to send money to the CC (bank transfer, pay my bills, wire, whatever they call it) or the CC issuer's system to take money from your bank account, and if so, how (debit card, ACH...)? – jcaron Jan 14 '21 at 14:46
  • @jcaron has hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately it looks like a TDU so we will never know :/ :/ – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 14:50

5 Answers5

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Don't be afraid, but definitely leave the money in your account!!!

It's spent money; the other bank just doesn't realize it yet.

I'd probably call the CC bank and ask them what account they think the money came from. That may be the problem: they took it from the wrong account.

EDIT: if your bank has Overdraft Protection via linked savings accounts, an idea is to move that $5100 to the savings account so that the $5100 doesn't "clutter" your checking account; when they finally come for the money, it'll get pulled from the savings account.

EDIT2: If you use ODP and they charge you for it, call and politely (but firmly) say you want it reversed because you're such a good customer. If they balk, explain the circumstances.

RonJohn
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    If you're lucky, the 'wrong account' was from a Mr. Bezos or such, and he will never realize it... – Aganju Jan 11 '21 at 23:26
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    Overdraft protection typically has fees attached. Relying on it seems like a bad idea. – user2357112 Jan 12 '21 at 01:53
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    Better to go on-line with the bank, and ask them who they think was the source of Transaction #xxx. You did record the number for the transfer from your account to the CC when you made it. right ? – DJohnM Jan 12 '21 at 04:25
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    @user2357112supportsMonica but the fee can be reversed if you're a good customer, call them and ask nicely. – RonJohn Jan 12 '21 at 05:30
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    @user2357112supportsMonica while that is often true at US banks, if you ask for "overdraft sweep", or whatever your bank calls it, that should be free. You may need to use the specific name before your bank will admit to offering that service. – Colin Young Jan 12 '21 at 14:09
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    @user2357112supportsMonica Through some banks (say, Bank of America), overdraft protection through a linked account automatically debits the linked account for an overdraft without charging you, as long as both accounts combined have enough funds to cover the transaction. – jpaugh Jan 12 '21 at 19:38
  • My bank allows me to reverse up to two overdrafts within a two year period. Only employees can initiate the refund, so Ron's point about being nice isn't just rote advice. I would also (if it's possible in Covid times) visit a branch and do the request in person (call centers tend to be touchy on edge case requests). Branch managers are typically more amenable if you explain the situation – Machavity Jan 13 '21 at 15:04
  • @Aganju Mr. Bezos has enough money that it's worth having people actually keep the accounts. 2¢ is likely to be noticed. – fectin Jan 13 '21 at 15:08
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    @jpaugh Such banks will still charge you a fee for the 'convenience' of doing it. It may be free if you have a high enough balance across accounts with them, but entry level bank accounts that many people have typically incur fees for even the most basic services, like going inside and interacting with a teller. – TylerH Jan 13 '21 at 16:25
  • @ColinYoung - I've rarely, in fact never, seen the "overdraft - move money" feature be free – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 14:52
  • @Fattie definitely not free, but -- when not regularly ODing, which happened in The Bad Old Days -- Chase would reverse when I asked nicely. – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 15:46
  • @Fattie That's why I pointed out that you may need to know the exact name of the feature that your bank offers. I spent months with an old bank going back and forth describing the exact feature and they insisted I had to sign up for a short-term "loan" feature on which I would pay interest. Finally I found an employee who said "oh, you mean overdraft sweep, that's free." This at a bank that kept pending debit purchases hidden in a joint account. My current account has it as a standard feature (incl. with monthly service fee or minimum balance) – Colin Young Jan 14 '21 at 15:57
  • soudns like great advice @ColinYoung IN general as RonJohn points out, it is an extremely dangerous feature, use with care, young people ! – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 16:04
  • @Fattie you confuse dangerous with expensive. Sure they're related, but hardly the same... – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 16:21
  • @ColinYoung hopefully your current account is at a new bank... :) – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 16:22
  • @RonJohn - no, it's literally dangerous (as pointed out in this answer). For example a friend accidentally spent $2500, not realizing that an account he had a specific amt. of money in (sort of a 'grocery account') was empty: AND the bank by default had "auto-transfer" on from another savings account. Sucks! (unrelated to that danger, I was mentioning that they (usually) have a fee) – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 18:13
  • (Sorry if I was uinclear earlier, @RonJohn ) – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 18:43
  • @Fattie "accidentally" spent $2500 on groceries? – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 19:02
  • No mystery, Ron .. groceries are $200 - $300 a run for a family. (I did not mean "one transaction") My friend's wife had utterly no idea, nor did friend, that the "account designated for that" had been emptied (since there were tragically NO alerts given, on the process by the bank (sms etc) and as I say it was a ridiculous default from the bank. this went on for weeks and with groc. and other spending, 2500$ depleted from a savings act! (AND charged a few bucks for every transaction! AND no joy on refunds from the bank) – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 19:05
  • (So, next time one opens a new account at a bank - you know how these days you can just click if you want a new account + card, perhaps for "car repairs saving" or "Little Jenny to use at college" or whatever - At this bank by DEFAULT and WITHOUT telling anyone, they "hooked it" that way to "whatever other account happened to have money in it". You see? Talk about a gotchya! Hence, if you put $1000 in for Jenny, with the idea being it will plain stop working when she spends the last $8 at starbucks, that was NOT the case - due to the default being the "auto - transfer" feature.) – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 19:08
  • @Fattie personal responsibility: regularly check your bank account! – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 19:11
  • @Fattie also... use a credit card!!! Get cash back, and choose what account to pay it from. – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 19:13
  • Nothing's more responsible than putting $X in an account and knowing that it will actually stop working!! when it is empty :) The only problem was the default of that bank was to "conveniently" turn on auto-transfer feature. I checked my bank and they have the same idiotic default !!! – Fattie Jan 14 '21 at 19:15
  • @Fattie the personally responsible person does not assume that others will look after your best interest when money is involved. As Reagan quoted the Russians: trust, but verify. – RonJohn Jan 14 '21 at 20:19
  • well said @RonJohn , well said !!! – Fattie Jan 15 '21 at 11:50
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The reverse happened to one of my kids. A payment for a credit card bill that wasn't theirs was made from their bank account. They notified their bank, and worried that the account had been hacked. During the investigation a second payment was made. Only then did the bank realized that another customer had fat-fingered their 16 digit bank account number, and the credit card payment had come out of the wrong account. The money was returned.

It is possible that something similar happened in your case. You miss-entered the account number but it was still a valid number. Eventually the owner of the other account will notice.

I have no idea how much notice they will give you before pulling the money from your bank account. Therefore you should keep the money there in case they remove it before they tell you.

Generally the bank has a time limit that starts when the statement is generated. The other party has to report the strange transaction before the window closes, but if the statement is quarterly, it is possible that the clock didn't start until a few days ago.

mhoran_psprep
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    This is what check digits are for. Credit/Debit cards have them, and ever since I learned about them, I've never understood why bank account numbers don't have them. – RonJohn Jan 11 '21 at 18:39
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    Old account numbers didn't have check digits. My first account from a credit union was only 4 digits long. Modern account numbers are long enough to have check digits. The bank never explained why the transaction happened when the names didn't match. – mhoran_psprep Jan 11 '21 at 18:45
  • Possible counter-example: My current checking accounts from Chase are shorter than my "legacy" (inherited from acquired banks and S&Ls) accounts. – RonJohn Jan 11 '21 at 19:18
  • @RonJohn Check digits only tell you if it's a valid account number, not if it's the intended account number. – Kaz Jan 12 '21 at 09:10
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    The IBAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number (used in europe and some other countries, 77 total) uses check digits. Alas, the USA does apparently not use IBAN. – til_b Jan 12 '21 at 09:16
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    with a hundred possible check numbers there is a 1% chance of collision, so that the check numbers are the same for 2 bank accounts. Totally possible to happen. – Christian Jan 12 '21 at 09:47
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    Hold on, you're saying by simply knowing a valid account number someone could get money off of it without any security whatsoever? – htmlcoderexe Jan 12 '21 at 09:58
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    Here in the UK they only recently started checking names on the account the money is sent to. The trouble is that people have slightly different names on different accounts. E.g. "John Smith" versus "J M Smith" versus "John Michael Smith and Marlene William Smith". This makes name matching hard. – Paul Johnson Jan 12 '21 at 10:01
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    See also "Falsehoods programmers believe about names". https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ and "Living by Numbers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOAiUH0T1Q – Paul Johnson Jan 12 '21 at 10:05
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    @Christian The ways people make mistakes aren't uniformly random and check digits are usually designed around that fact. E.g. for IBAN neither changing one digit nor flipping the order of two of them ever produces a number with valid check digits, so you'd have to make two of those mistakes at the same time to even have a chance at having the same check digits. So, yes it is still possible to have a collision, but the chance should be far below 1%. – mlk Jan 12 '21 at 10:44
  • @kaz when account numbers have check digits, I don't remember the exact statistics (it's been a long time), but the likelihood of fat-fingering a wrong-but-valid (transposed or off-by-one) account number is vanishingly small. Possibly zero. (That's the purposes of a check digit.) – RonJohn Jan 12 '21 at 14:25
  • @htmlcoderexe In some cases, yes. I recently saw a new account be opened at a major US-based brokerage (completely online), with information input about the routing number and account number for an account to draw from for funding. Thousands of dollars (USD) were taken out of the source account (which happened to have the same owner) & deposited at the brokerage without any visible security or verification. The brokerage interface also let money move the other way too, and this wasn't just for initial funding. I've seen the same thing on a new account at a major US bank, >$10K. Kind of scary! – WBT Jan 12 '21 at 15:54
  • @RonJohn Ah, I think I understand now. It's not so much the digit itself, but more the fact that any system designed with a check digit should never have 2 account numbers only 1-wrong-digit away from each other. – Kaz Jan 12 '21 at 16:28
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    @kaz that's exactly right. It's darned clever, and 100% shameful that it's so rarely used. – RonJohn Jan 12 '21 at 16:35
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    In the US, erroneous, including unauthorized, electronic fund transfers fall under 15 U.S.C. § 1693f, which prescribes substantial requirements on how your financial institution handles verbal or written reports of errors. The requirements include completing an in investigation within 10 business days, or provisionally fully crediting the account and completing within 45 days. Failure to follow all requirements in that section carries a treble damages penalty and is a criminal act (as are all willful failures to comply with 15 U.S.C. § 1693). – Makyen Jan 12 '21 at 18:43
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    Credit card numbers have check digits. Many bank account numbers don't. PayPal solves this easily - before you can use a bank account for anything they make you verify it by PayPal putting in two small (< $1) deposits and you have to respond back with what the amounts are - if you can't verify then it hit the wrong account. But a lot of other EFTs - including big payments - don't do that kind of verification. I once had a customer in the beer business (all EFT by law) that pulled payment for a truckload of beer from a pastor's account because of a messed up number! – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jan 12 '21 at 19:07
  • @Makyen I think that information would probably be worth an answer in its own right. – nick012000 Jan 13 '21 at 11:17
  • @htmlcoderexe That's correct, but if it's fraudulent, they'll find a way to get the money back and possibly throw you in jail as well. – user253751 Jan 13 '21 at 15:41
  • @WBT What you describe is indeed completely normal in the U.S. Pretty much the only possible verification step is one like what manassehkatz mentioned that PayPal does where they may a couple of < $1 deposits to your account and you have to enter the amounts to verify ownership of the account. This can take a day or two, though. Here's an even better one, though: the same lack of any security measures is also true for the United States Treasury Department with regards to paying federal income taxes or receiving refunds. You simply enter your routing number and account number and that's it. – reirab Jan 14 '21 at 03:35
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Couple of points:

  • "Extra" money doesn't just appear in the bank out of thin air. The transferred money came out of somebody's account.

  • Your bank can't trace the transaction without the transaction number since the transaction isn't tied to your account. (Theoretically they could search for payments to your credit card company within a date range that correspond to the exact payment amount which you know. But that would almost certainly take more data access privileges than any normal bank employee would have.)

Just calling and talking to "someone" leaves you in a vulnerable position -- no auditable trail that you tried to fix the problem. Write the credit card company explaining the error and ask for written conformation as to what information they have about the transaction. Then send that written information to your bank explaining the error again and ask them to fix the mistake.

Again the whole point here is to create an auditable record that you have tried to fix the problem.

The credit card company would at least have the transaction number for the money transfer. I'm not sure that if they would get your bank account number too. But with the transaction number then your bank could trace the account number from which the funds were taken.

Now as was suggested offset your bank balance by the $5100 and leave it there. Sooner or later someone will come looking for the money. This isn't like finding a penny on the street.

MaxW
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    "Sooner or later someone will come looking for the money"... that is not always the case, even for amounts of this size. There are plenty of cases where something like this is never corrected. Banks have a certain tolerance for non-reconciliation and a process to give up investigating it and cover the discrepancy from their own operating funds. There are also cases where they never even see a discrepancy because the loss came from a customer at another bank and they either never complained or the complaint was never followed up on properly. – Bart Jan 13 '21 at 20:36
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You made the 2 calls. I'd not touch the money in your account. For a very long time. At some point, say 3 years, you'd be all set.

I'd bet the bank catches the mistake soon, within a few months from now.

JTP - Apologise to Monica
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    I’d suggest 6 years. Lots of things take six years to run out. Obviously if you are not asked for three years it’s unlikely anything happens, but after six years someone might have lost their legal rights to your money. – gnasher729 Jan 12 '21 at 10:21
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    If you check your bank's T&Cs you should find the number of years in there. But you might to better to ring them and the credit card company again and tell them both about the discrepancy. Better to have it sorted out than possibly years of uncertainty. – Paul Johnson Jan 12 '21 at 11:14
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    I wouldn’t mind six years of uncertainty if I can kept $5,000 in the end. – gnasher729 Jan 12 '21 at 12:08
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Banks did not get rich by losing a few pounds here and there on a customer's account!

The bank will notice this problem at some point and they will rectify it by debiting the amount from your account.

Do not spend this money, instead consider £5000 as your new zero.

Given that the bank have done nothing after you contacted them, then, depending on where you live, you may get some joy by contacting your banking regulator. Your bank have made a mistake somewhere along the line and you may possibly be eligible for some compensation or at the very least an apology.

Paddy
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  • An apology/compensation for not having money taken away? How do you figure that one? – Lio Elbammalf Jan 12 '21 at 14:25
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    Please, give me 5000 dollars in my account and I will also accept an apology! – vikingsteve Jan 12 '21 at 15:08
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    Your bank has messed up your account (positively or negatively, it's still bad) and it's taking your time and effort to rectify the situation. As the credit card company claims to be paid, it seems likely that some other schmuck is down 5k on their account by accident. These are the sort of things that financial regulators tend to be unhappy about. – Paddy Jan 12 '21 at 15:25
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    @LioElbammalf, this is definitely something a customer has the right to complain about. The bank is responsible for processing transactions correctly and in a timely manner. I understand that it's a much worse problem the other way around, but this is not something I would ever ignore or give up on. – Bart Jan 13 '21 at 20:32
  • @LioElbammalf "not having money taken away" is one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is "inaccurate reporting funds". – Acccumulation Nov 15 '22 at 04:39