I made a transfer with a mistyped IBAN once in the online interface of my German bank. The bank called me a day later and said that there’s something wrong with my IBAN, so I double-checked, realised my mistake and did the same transfer to the correct IBAN. I did not loose any money.

every online interface would check the IBAN checksum, this seems like a bad bank or a bad story aka lie.

But that's very unlikely because IBAN has a checksum precisely to prevent typos.

Plus banks in Europe have a transfer reversal grave period so you just call them and they'll most likely be able to undo the transaction.

I'm not sure about IBAN, but in the UK there are multiple layers that help you avoid sending to the wrong account. However, if you do ultimately send money into an actual incorrect person's account, the only thing the recipient's bank will do is to ask them to send it back. They will not give you contact details or anything else.

TIL - more on IBAN checksum:

> The IBAN check digit consists of two digits in positions 3 and 4 of the IBAN. It is calculated using the MOD97 algorithm and provides the primary integrity check for the IBAN standard.

https://www.iban.com/iban-checker

> mistyped

Very unlikely, the checksum would prevent that.

And most banks (even though I’m unsure it is mandatory) will check the recipient, if totally mismatched a warning will be raised.

But if you send money to the wrong iban+recipient, the money is gone.

It is not gone. You may have to go through courts if the recipient does not return the money voluntarily though.

You will not have any luck enforcing that court judgment if the recipient does not want to play ball. All they need to do is transfer the money to another country.

It is very unlikely that law enforcement would help you in a situation like this, especially internationally.

> To everyone: If you wrongly send money to a mistyped IBAN it is gone.

You clearly have no idea how an IBAN works. It has a checksum exactly to avoid mistyping.

And even if you send the money to an valid, but wrong, IBAN then one of two things happens:

* The account doesn't exist -> transaction bounces * The account does exist -> ask for money back, worst case go to court to recover it

But the money is not gone. There are no black holes just swallowing everything up.

To everyone: the above is wrong.

There’s SWIFT, and they have a reasonably good dispute mechanism, at least for cross border payments.