to ask whats the maximum sum you would be prepared to write off in this situation

[user09090909E]

if you paid someone some money by mistake, they offered to refund it if you sent them your bank account details but you didn't want to give them your bank account details because you didn't trust them, what's the maximum sum you could live with as the cost of your mistake?

am in exactly this situation and am just thinking of writing it off. but unsure becauase of the amount.

Actually the risk is the other way around.
Someone could phone the bank, posing as the OP and pass the security verification with the account number/sort code, address, email and/or telephone number associated with the account.

That's why many banks have additional security questions but IME some don't!

OP, just get a Monzo account, Paypal or something that allows you to send a payment request. Problem solved.

Every time you set up a direct debit you are providing your bank account and sort code details. Do you just not do direct debits?

The same could happen when you pay by credit card. They have your name / number / expiry date and if you hand it over, then the 3 digit pin.

If someone uses my bank details to transfer me money but revised to give me bank details to pay them back and demanded it in cash or PayPal I'd just refuse. Far more complicated/more hassle for me when I am happy to send a bank transfer back. The fact you don't trust me!! Would make it even ruder and more likely to dig my held in. .

As what could you do? Sue me? I am offering repayment and I didn't ask for the money in the first place! No court would demand I repay in a different way to how I received the money.

£0.

Because the risk of them committing fraud on my account is tiny.

If I was genuinely worried they were the sort of person who might do that, I'd set up a new bank account and close it once I'd received the money. Takes minutes to set up a new account and you get the account details almost instantly.

Paypal

@MassiveOvaryaction Apologies for the tag, I've no idea how to respond otherwise.

Yes, it's often a topic in child maintenance support groups; it's particularly a concern for those fleeing domestic abuse with new bank accounts ( I've heard stories of abusive ex partners using the bank transfer reference to further abuse/harass/mock the person fleeing )sort codes are identifiable by the branch it was opened at. It's not particularly advertised but some banks in these circumstances, upon request or possibly at the request of the child maintenance service, can assign it as a non-geographical bank number/account.

Surely every time you send someone a cheque you give them all your bank details printed on the cheque so what’s the difference in giving details for a bank transfer?

Considering that your bank details are not something “private” - people used to write cheques for decades and the account number and sort code, your bank name and your name, we’re all on the cheques, what’s the issue?

So I would not write off anything. There’s no big deal.

Another example of somebody asking for advice then criticising every response because it's not what they want to hear.
So here is my answer. The amount I'd be prepared to write off is £ 1.72.
I would not be afraid of providing my a/c number and sort code, not least because it appears to be your own stupidity that led to you paying somebody other than the intended person. I would take the (extremely small) risk of the random person I'd paid in error being a money launderer and deal with that highly unlikely scenario should it arise.
You don't appear to have revealed how much money is at stake and I'm not really interested anyway. Hopefully a lesson learned -check details carefully before transferring money. (incidentally my bank will put up a flag if any of the details don't look right before confirming the transaction

For that to be true OP would have abandoned her young kids with an abuser so dangerous they apparently can't even know her sort code in case they can magyver what part of the country she maybe in but who a court has ordered her to pay support too?

OP clearly doesn't need the money as shes willing to write it off so lets say that is true, would it not just be deducted from the amount of next payment? no need to return it.

Not for some accounts

Sort codes are usually attached to the bank's head office these days.

They haven't been a reliable indicator of an individual branch since the days when it was normal to go into a bank to open an account.

Haven’t RTFT so someone else may have already mentioned that the Pay M service closed in March 2023.

Oh that's a shame, I used to find it really useful. I suppose if you don't use it, you loose it.

I’m a couple of days late to the thread and someone might already have mentioned it but on some banking apps you can generate a link that you can text to somebody if they need some way of paying money into your account. I know that Natwest does this and they do two different links. One is an anytime link which anyone can use - it never expires and can be used 50 times a day. Or a one time link where you specify the amount and the link expires after five days.

I’d write off about £100 for a stranger £500 for family

Feeling as you feel I would (as others suggested) give them PayPal details or i’d set up a new account have them pay into it and then close it. Its pretty easy/ quick to do.

Contact the bank, it's extremely difficult to send money to the wrong person though, how did you manage it? There's even a name checker with my bank now to check the account number matches the name you want to pay.

I would give them my bank details. They can't do anything with the information. Businesses do millions of transactions this way. You clearly don't understand what bank transfer means... it can only go one way. Talk to your bank to reassure yourself.

It seems fairly clear that the op just selected the wrong person in her payment screen.

It won't be someone new as it would be hard to set up the payee and get name wrong.

And they'd have no way of contacting that person. So must be a known person they have paid before. )

Take your tin foil hat off love.

The thread has moved on and I will read the rest of the posts but I just wanted to address this:

I work for and did work for one of the big 4 high street banks back then. I'm not joking when I say that when that article came out, the next day the bank had stricter identification rules in place. Yes, they were a bit rocky while the techy stuff was sorted, but ultimately, it took less than 24 hours for things to change.

Of course it's now 16 years later, systems are better, AI is better, human beings are better trained and more attuned to potential fraud. FCA guidance and rules are better. As consumers, we are better protected than ever - it's extremely hard for the bank to prove that a customer was at fault, those cases you see in the news will never have all the details.

Anyway, back to read the rest of the comments!

@Winter2020 see above post re Clarkson!

That’s for setting the record straight. I genuinely didn’t realise it was quite so long ago (time flies eh?!). Some of the early posts on this thread reminded me of Jeremy Clarkson’s attitude that nothing can be done with bank account details but I’m sorry to have brought it up.