Adeyomola Oladapo, a Lagos resident, wanted to send N15,000 to an Access Bank customer on July 4, but he mistakenly sent it to a different account with a similar account number within the same bank.
Oladapo, who is also an Access Bank customer, told FIJ that he was unaware of the erroneous transfer on that day in July until the intended recipient informed him that he had not received the money.
“Unfortunately, I had transferred the money to another Access Bank account that bore a semblance to the original Access account number. If you look at the two numbers, they nearly correspond,” he told FIJ.
A review of the two Access Bank account numbers showed that Oladapo had repeated the third digit of the actual number twice and had omitted the last digit.
So, instead of transferring N15,000 to an account that bore a female name, Oladapo sent the money to a customer bearing the name “Idris Salisu”.
FIJ understands that this Lagos resident’s financial institution has not been able to help him recover the money, more than 10 weeks later.
“I had to go to a branch of my bank to report the erroneous transfer. Before then, I had called the customer care team, and they told me to go to my bank,” Oladapo disclosed.
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“There, at the bank, they told me there was nothing they could do. They said if I had brought a court order, they would have immediately deducted the money. They said another option is if the wrong recipient willingly returns the money to me. I have sent them several emails, too,” he added.
On Wednesday, FIJ reached out to the bank’s help centre via X and email.
The bank’s response on X read: “Kindly engage the account holder to reach out to us or call our phone lines…for further assistance. Please note that recall of funds is dependent on the availability of funds in the beneficiary’s account and the beneficiary’s consent. There is no fixed time for resolution, and as such, feedback will be provided only when we have an update from the beneficiary’s bank.”
Anthonia Kayode, who responded to FIJ’s email on Thursday, wrote: “Kindly be informed that this erroneous transaction complaint is still receiving attention and feedback would be communicated to the account holder upon resolution. Please inform the account holder to reach out to us for further assistance.”
Although Oladapo did not obtain a court order as advised when he had visited his bank in July, he believes that the bank should be able to recover the money without getting a court document that would cost him more than the missing N15,000.
Some of FIJ’s previous reports show that Nigerian banks sometimes fail to reverse erroneous transactions, even when customers present court orders.
In 2024, a Lagos resident shared how Access Bank had been dragging its feet instead of helping him to recover a N360,000 sum he erroneously sent to a wrong account number, despite having presented a court order to the bank.
Businessman Olawale Akintola also told FIJ how Ecobank did not expedite action in recovering a N1.8 million sum he erroneously transferred to a wrong account number. This is despite the fact that a court order had been sent to the bank to retrieve the sum.
Both incidents were only resolved after FIJ reported on the delay by the banks. [FIJ]
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