Tracing, cancelling or recalling a payment sent abroad

Sending money abroad is fast, and that speed is exactly why mistakes are hard to undo. Once an international payment has left your account and been executed, your bank or transfer provider cannot simply reverse it: the money has passed through one or more other providers, and often into the recipient's account, where your bank has no authority to reach in and take it back. What is possible instead is a cancellation, if the payment has not yet gone through, or a recall or trace, which is a request to the receiving side to send the money back.

Whether any of that works depends on three things: how quickly you act, what kind of mistake or problem happened, and whether the payment stayed inside the UK. A payment you never authorised is treated very differently from one you authorised yourself, and a payment sent to a UK account has stronger refund rules behind it than one sent overseas. This page sets out each route in turn, what your provider must do under the rules, how long refunds take, and where the protections stop.

Once it has gone, a payment abroad usually cannot be cancelled

The first thing to understand is that an international payment is not like a direct debit or a standing order, which you can stop before it leaves. A wire transfer or Swift payment is executed when your provider sends it into the international system, and from that point the money is moving through correspondent banks and payout networks that your provider does not control. There is no general right to change your mind once the payment has been made, and no rule that forces the receiving bank abroad to hand the money back.

That is why prevention matters more than cure. Some banks now show a warning when you transfer money to someone, prompting you to double check the details are correct and think twice about whether the person you are sending money to is genuine⁷. Taking a minute over the recipient details, the account number or IBAN, and the name of the person you are paying costs nothing; unwinding a wrong payment can take weeks and may fail entirely.

What you can do after the payment has gone depends on which situation you are in, and the routes are quite different:

Each of these routes is covered in the sections below. The short version: act immediately, contact your provider by phone, and keep a record of every conversation, reference number and time, because the speed of your report affects both what can be done and what you are entitled to.

Recalling a payment sent to the wrong account number

A "misdirected payment" happens when you send money to the wrong bank account². This is not a scam and not an unauthorised payment: you meant to pay, but you paid the wrong place. Perhaps you typed a digit incorrectly in an IBAN, used an out-of-date account number, or picked the wrong saved recipient in your app.

Your first step is to contact your bank to request your money back². The bank then asks the receiving bank, through the same messaging system that carried the payment, to return the funds. This is what people usually mean by a "recall". It is a request, not an order: the receiving bank has to check whether the money is still in the recipient's account, and the recipient may have to consent, depending on the country and the bank's own rules. If the money has already been withdrawn or moved on, there may be nothing to return.

There is one piece of good news in this situation. If the account you have sent the money to does not exist, the payment should fail and the money should automatically bounce back to you². Payments to a made-up account number, or to an account that has been closed, are rejected by the receiving side and returned along the same path, usually within days rather than weeks. This is also why a payment that seems to vanish is often simply sitting in the system awaiting rejection, and a trace through your provider can confirm where it is.

If the account does exist and the recipient's bank will not or cannot return the money, your options narrow. Your bank is not obliged to compensate you for a payment you authorised and sent to the account details you gave, even if those details were wrong. In practice, some banks will assist with a claim against the recipient, but recovering money from someone who received it in error can become a civil matter between you and them. If you believe your bank handled your recall request badly, for example by delaying or failing to pass the request on, you can complain to the bank and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which has told banks in past cases to refund payments where the bank was at fault⁹.

Cancelling a transfer made through a money transfer app

Money transfer apps and services, such as the Post Office International Money Transfer and similar providers, work slightly differently from bank-to-bank wires, because many of them hold the money at an intermediate stage before it is paid out. That creates a genuine cancellation window, but it closes quickly.

The Post Office's rules are a typical example. You can cancel a money transfer only if it has not been picked up by your receiver. If you sent money to a bank account, you can cancel it if the transfer has not been completed by your receiver's bank¹. In other words, for a cash pickup transfer the window lasts until the recipient walks into the agent and collects the money; for an account deposit it lasts until the receiving bank has completed the credit. Once either has happened, cancellation is no longer possible and you are into recall territory instead.

If you realise quickly that something is wrong, phone the provider's support line immediately rather than waiting to be near the app. Cancellation is a race against the payout, and a cash pickup service can be collected within minutes of being sent. Note the reference number of the transfer, which every provider issues, because support staff will need it to find and stop the payment.

One further point on protection. MoneyHelper warns that paying by bank transfer gives you much less protection than paying by card, because it is harder to get your money back and you have much less protection if something goes wrong¹⁰. That applies to transfers arranged through apps too: the fact that a service has a slick app does not change the legal position once the money has been paid out. If a provider refuses a cancellation that its own terms allow, put the complaint in writing, and take an unresolved complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Refund times after a cancellation or a claim

How long money takes to come back depends on which route you are using, and the timescales range from days to over a month.

For a cancelled transfer that had not yet been paid out, the Post Office states it may take up to seven business days from the day the refund was issued for the funds to show in your account, depending on your bank's practice¹. That is the provider issuing the refund and your own bank then processing it, so the delay is not a sign that anything has gone wrong.

Where a refund is claimed under the Payment Services Regulations, for example for an unauthorised payment, the law sets a deadline for the provider: any refund or justification for refusing a refund must be provided within 10 business days of receiving a request for a refund, or of receiving any further information requested⁵. The Financial Conduct Authority gives a similar picture for scam reimbursement within the UK: reimbursement is usually completed within 5 working days, and can take up to 35 working days⁴.

A recall of a misdirected payment has no fixed legal timescale at all, because it depends on the receiving bank abroad responding. Ask your own bank what its standard recall process is and when it will chase the reply, and diarise a follow-up. If weeks pass with nothing, ask for a trace, which is a formal request for the status of the payment at each stage of the chain, rather than a demand for the money.

Unauthorised payments: your rights under the Payment Services Regulations

Everything so far has assumed you authorised the payment, even if you regret it or sent it to the wrong place. The position changes completely if you did not authorise it at all, for example because someone obtained your security details, cloned your card, or used your account through a fraudster's access. Here the Payment Services Regulations 2017 give you strong rights.

The core rule is in regulation 76. Where an executed payment transaction was not authorised, the payment service provider must refund the amount of the unauthorised payment transaction to the payer and, where applicable, restore the debited payment account to the state it would have been in had the unauthorised payment transaction not taken place³. In plain terms: you get the money back, and your account is put back as if the payment never happened. That restoration matters in practice, because an unauthorised payment can push you into an overdraft or cause a missed payment elsewhere. Your provider must also refund interest or other charges, such as an overdraft fee, caused by the unauthorised payment¹¹.

There are limits on your own liability. If your card was lost or stolen and is not reported, the Payment Services Regulations allow the bank to hold you responsible for the first £35 of any unauthorised card fraud, though anything above this is reimbursed⁴. Where your card details were used without the card itself being lost or stolen, for example after cloning or a data breach, the Regulations mean a full refund is due as long as the unauthorised transaction is reported promptly¹¹. Once your bank has been told that your card has been stolen or that someone else has got hold of your security details, you are not liable for any unauthorised payments taken after that¹³. And if your provider can show that you acted fraudulently, no refund is owed¹¹.

The practical steps are simple and the order matters:

1. Contact your bank as soon as possible and claim a refund¹⁴. Do this the moment you spot the payment.
2. Report any lost card or compromised security details, which ends your liability for anything taken afterwards¹³.
3. Ask for the interest and charges caused by the payment to be refunded as well, so your account is fully restored¹¹.
4. If the provider refuses, ask for its reasons in writing and take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

These rights also cover newer ways of paying. If a fraudster finds a way to use Pay by Bank to make unauthorised payments from your account, you can get redress under the Payment Services Regulations¹⁵. Similarly, any further payments taken by a business after you cancel a recurring card payment are considered to be unauthorised transactions¹⁶. The same principles apply to unauthorised card use in distance sales, such as a purchase made over the internet or by telephone without your permission, where you may have a right to get your money back¹⁷, and if your card provider will not give you your money back in such a case, you can report them to Trading Standards¹⁷.

Where the Payment Services Regulations do not help

The Regulations are powerful, but they only apply to payments you did not authorise. If you authorised the payment yourself, even under pressure, deception or a scammer's instructions, the transaction is treated as authorised, and the refund rights above do not apply. That distinction is the single most important thing to understand about getting money back.

For authorised payments, the UK introduced a mandatory reimbursement scheme for authorised push payment (APP) scams from 7 October 2024, under which your bank will usually have to give you a refund if you made this type of payment on or after that date⁶. But the scheme has a hard territorial limit: it applies where the payment was sent from a bank in the UK to another bank in the UK¹³. The reimbursement protections apply to UK Faster Payments only; they do not apply to international transfers, debit, credit card or crypto payments¹⁸.

The legal position was tightened in 2024 to make this explicit. The amended Payment Services Regulations apply the reimbursement rules to any payment transaction which is authorised, executed wholly within the United Kingdom in sterling, and not initiated by or through a payee¹⁹. A payment sent abroad fails that test, whatever the currency.

The scheme's exclusions also rule out several other situations: card payments, cryptocurrency transfers, payments to accounts the consumer controls, civil disputes, first-party fraud, gross negligence, payments before 7 October 2024, and claims made more than 13 months after the last payment¹⁸. Some edge rules soften the edges slightly: a provider may not refuse a refund until it has received further information it has asked for, and it must either refund the full amount or provide justification for refusing, indicating the bodies to which you can refer the matter²⁰. And where a provider failed to give you the information about a payment it was required to provide, you keep your redress rights even if you failed to notify it of the problem²¹. The Regulations also protect consumers rather than everyone: the redemption rights in the Electronic Money Regulations do not apply to a person, other than a consumer, who accepts electronic money²².

Chargeback, the card scheme process for reversing a card payment, is sometimes suggested as an alternative, but there are no guarantees your bank will be able to recover the money through chargeback²³. It is a scheme rule process, not a legal right, and it does not apply to bank transfers at all.

Hidden charges in the exchange rate

Getting the money back is one problem; noticing how much the payment cost in the first place is another. The cost of an international payment is often not in a stated fee but in the exchange rate you are given. Providers take a margin between the mid-market rate and the rate they pass on to you, and because it is inside the rate rather than beside it, many people never notice it.

The rules require some transparency. Under the Payment Services Regulations, the party offering a currency conversion service at an ATM, point of sale or by the payee must disclose to the payer all charges as well as the exchange rate to be used²⁴. After the payment, where currency conversion applies, you must be given information including the exchange rate used in the payment transaction by the payee's payment service provider, and the amount of the payment transaction before that currency conversion²⁵. So a provider offering you conversion must show you the rate and the charges up front, and confirm the rate actually used afterwards.

What the rules do not do is force the rate itself to be good. A provider can comply fully while building a wide margin into its rate, which is why comparing the rate you are quoted against the mid-market rate, and comparing banks against specialist providers, is worth doing before large or regular payments. For regular payments abroad, a repeated margin costs far more over a year than a single fee would.

Two further costs catch people out. If you pay for foreign currency on a credit card, your card provider will charge you a cash advance fee, most will also charge you a higher APR, and you will not get an interest-free period even if you repaid the bill in full and on time²⁶. And there is a specific tax rule to know about: where the overseas transfer charge arises in the case of a transfer, the charge is 25% of the transferred value²⁷. This charge applies to particular categories of transfer, not to ordinary family remittances, but it is a reminder that moving large sums across borders can trigger rules that ordinary domestic payments never touch. If you are sending a large sum overseas, check which rules apply to your specific transfer before you send it.

If you were tricked into sending money abroad

The hardest cases are scams. A bank transfer scam, more commonly known as authorised push payment (APP) fraud, occurs when someone knowingly or unwittingly transfers money from their own bank account to another account which belongs to a scammer²⁸. You authorised the payment, so the unauthorised-payment rules do not apply, and if the money went abroad, the UK reimbursement scheme does not either¹³.

That does not mean doing nothing. Contact your bank immediately: if you have lost money after following a link sent to you in a fake text, contact your bank²⁹, and the same applies to other scam types. The bank can still attempt a recall, and speed matters. If the scam involved a phishing email, a template letter to your bank can help you get the money reimbursed, asking the bank to credit the disputed sum back and confirm this has been done³⁰. If you paid a scammer with gift cards, contact your bank and the gift card provider immediately to try to recover your money, because sometimes the gift card provider will be able to block the gift card before it is spent³¹.

Report the scam as well as chasing the money. In Scotland, common scam types are documented by the Scottish Government to help people spot them²⁸, and reporting to Action Fraud or Police Scotland builds the picture that helps banks warn others. Check your account for other transactions you do not recognise and report any quickly, because you will usually get a refund if it is fraud³². The Financial Ombudsman Service can also look at how your bank handled your case, and in past cases it has told banks to refund payments where the bank's own conduct fell short⁹.

For future payments, the protections are preventive rather than curative. Some banks now warn you when you transfer money to someone new⁷, and MoneyHelper's guidance on shopping and paying safely sets out how to reduce the risks when paying anyone you have not paid before¹⁰. The dedicated guide to scams involving payments abroad covers the warning signs in more detail, and your rights under the Payment Services Regulations explains the full framework behind the refund rules on this page.