International transfers sent through correspondent banking do not have a chargeback mechanism. What exists is a recall request: your bank asks the receiving bank to return the funds. The receiving bank is not obliged to comply, and generally cannot without the account holder's consent or a legal order.
What determines whether it works
- Whether the money is still in the beneficiary account. This is the single biggest factor, and it decays by the hour.
- Whether the receiving bank treats it as suspected fraud rather than a commercial dispute.
- Whether the beneficiary account has been flagged before.
- The jurisdiction, and whether it cooperates readily on financial crime.
Say it correctly
Ask your bank to "raise a recall on the basis of suspected fraud" and to "send an urgent SWIFT message to the beneficiary bank". A request logged as a customer error or a change of mind is handled slower and with less weight. If the payment was induced by deception, say so plainly and ask for it to be recorded that way.
What to collect
- The wire reference or UETR — the unique identifier that lets any bank in the chain trace it.
- The exact value date and time of the transfer.
- The beneficiary name, account number or IBAN, and the receiving bank's SWIFT/BIC code.
- Everything that induced the payment: the invoice, the email chain, the changed bank details.
Business email compromise makes this urgent
Where a legitimate invoice was intercepted and the bank details altered, both your company and the genuine supplier are affected, and both banks need to be told. The genuine supplier should be contacted by phone on a known number rather than by replying to any email in the compromised chain.
Set expectations honestly: recalls of funds already withdrawn rarely succeed. The value of acting quickly is that the outcome is decided in the first hours, not the following weeks.