Sending MTN Mobile Money to a wrong number is something that has happened ever since the advent of mobile transactions. This can be caused by many things but the most common reason is human error. Many fraudsters also love using tactics of calling unsuspecting clients telling them that they have sent them mobile money erroneously only to discover its all a fraud.
We have also heard of instances where customers are charged for reversing a transaction when they send MTN Mobile Money to a wrong number. But this often happens on other networks.
Recent UCC report indicates that the number of mobile money registration grew by 2.2% from 23,249,967 to 24,472,033 in the last quarter of 2018 and the total number of active subscribers who have registered business in the period of 90 days dropped by 3.6%. The number dropped from 14,169,240 from the third quarter of 2018 to 13,652,583 in Q4.
In a tweet, MTN has detailed 4 steps you can take if you accidentally send MTN Mobile Money to a wrong number.
Step 1
Get in touch with MTN immediately with one of the 3 methods below. (use your country’s respective MTN contact for this step)
- Call 100
- Whatsapp 0772123100
- facebook.com/mtnug
- twitter.com/mtnug
Step 2
At this point, if the money is unused by the wrong recipient, the transaction can be reversed.
Step 3
MTN contacts the wrong recipient and will ask permission to reverse the money
Step 4
The reversal will be affected after 24 hours of reporting the issue. But that sad part about this process is that if the money has been withdrawn by the wrong recipient the transaction can’t be reversed.
ALSO READ: How to retrieve mobile money off a deceased person’s account
These are the 4 steps the company recommends– but getting back to reality, in most cases by the time someone calls customer care the recipient has reportedly already withdrawn the money.
MTN Mobile Money subscribers where hoping the company would add a feature in their mobile money app or USSD code to enable a customer self-reverse the last transaction (step 4). This would help the process and would eliminate the involvement of human intervention. But, we can see why MTN can’t allow such a feature for now, since they are dealing with money transactions which is very sensitive– either that or it might be a feature down on their road map.
In cases where the recipient refuses to allow MTN to reverse the procedure, the company advises the sender to get a court order to allow the reversal. If the cost of getting the court order is higher than the money erroneously sent, you might need to just give up on it.
In some cases, the wrong recipient’s phone is off for days, weeks or even months on end, MTN considers any number switched off up to 3 months as a churned customer and will be obliged to automatically and reverse the money.
