Problem with electronic transfer

Money transferred from one account wasn’t received by other bank

W e sent Dh300 to a service provider — from our Standard Chartered account to an Emirates NBD account — on October 2, 2017. Even though the money has been deducted from our account, the recipient has still not received the amount. Upon checking with Standard Chartered, they confirmed that the amount had already been sent out of their system. Emirates NBD asked the recipient for a swift copy/ MT103 form, which we obtained from Standard Chartered Bank, by paying an extra Dh30, and sent it over. They are now asking for further attested swift copy/MT103. This makes no sense because a swift copy can only be generated by the sending bank, once the receiving bank has acknowledged it. A swift copy is, in itself, an authentic document. I don’t know why they are stalling this payment with such roundabout issues. It’s just a small amount of Dh300 between two local bank accounts. And we have already spent an extra Dh30 on it. It is unacceptable in this day and age. We would be glad if Gulf News could assist us to get the money that they should have given us two weeks ago. From Mr Tousif Saleh Dubai

The management of Emirates NBD responds:

We are pleased to inform you that we have also received this complaint from our customer, the Beneficiary, and we have confirmed that we have not received the funds. However, we have sent a tracer to the remitter bank and will update our customer, the Beneficiary, upon receiving their feedback. Furthermore, in line with customer confidentiality policy, we are not able to provide Mr Saleh with any information and recommend that he approaches the remitter bank (in this case Standard Chartered), to get a confirmation on the status of the transferred funds. We would like to reiterate our commitment to providing superior service to our customers and thank you for your continuous support in providing us with the opportunity to resolve their issues.

Mr Saleh responds:

Thank you for getting back to us on this. I see that Emirates NBD had responded, and this is around the same time that the funds were returned to our Standard Chartered account by Emirates NBD. I would consider this case closed. Thank you again, for the efforts.

(Process initiation: November 3, 2017. Response from organisation: November 5, 2017. Reader Confirmation: January 4, 2018.)