At least at our institution, the code to track and manage incoming and outgoing wires was so old that it ran on at least 4 layers of emulation. Of course, not a single person knew how to maintain it (and this is a billion dollar financial institution).
But after a wire is sent, especially to smaller, non-us banks, it can literally be received via teletype or fax with relevant account information and recorded by hand at the receiving bank.
If you send to the wrong route or account in that instance, it basically disappears for you and you need to contact the receiving bank, which sometimes uses and intermediary bank,. If that’s the case, you need to find the intermediary bank and find the exact person who wrote it down, who then can find, hopefully, what account the money went to and fix the problem. This does not work 100% of the time.
It’s ludicrously analog and prone to errors and it’s amazing it works at all.
At least at our institution, the code to track and manage incoming and outgoing wires was so old that it ran on at least 4 layers of emulation. Of course, not a single person knew how to maintain it (and this is a billion dollar financial institution).
But after a wire is sent, especially to smaller, non-us banks, it can literally be received via teletype or fax with relevant account information and recorded by hand at the receiving bank.
If you send to the wrong route or account in that instance, it basically disappears for you and you need to contact the receiving bank, which sometimes uses and intermediary bank,. If that’s the case, you need to find the intermediary bank and find the exact person who wrote it down, who then can find, hopefully, what account the money went to and fix the problem. This does not work 100% of the time.
It’s ludicrously analog and prone to errors and it’s amazing it works at all.