Should the bank cover money lost due to an unsuccessful transfer?
Since the transaction was not your bank's mistake (but a decision by the Indian government) why should your bank bear the cost of the unsuccessful transaction? Your bank charged a fee for a service that you were willing to pay for. You might be able to negotiate a full or partial refund, and I have done the same with my own bank for fees that I didn't feel were appropriate.  Your bank will agree or not based on how much they value your business. If you are an otherwise profitable customer, they may agree to refund the fee.
Tackling your last point, all banks in the EU should be covered to around €100,000. The exact figure varies slightly between countries, and generally only private deposits are covered. In the UK it's the FSCS that covers private deposits, to a value of £85,000, see this for more information on what's covered. In France (for a euro denominated example), there's coverage up to €100,000 provided by Fonds de Garantie des Dépôts, see this (in French) for full details. There's a fairly good Wikipedia Article that covers all this too. I'll let someone else chime in on the mechanics of opening something covered by the schemes though! This really should be a comment, but I can't yet. The question desperately needs a location tag. In at least some countries(New Zealand), the default action on all insufficient funds transactions is to refuse the transaction. Credit cards are the only common exception. Every bank operating in NZ that I know of acts this way. Sometimes there is a fee for bouncing a transaction, sometimes not, that depends on the bank. Any other option must be explicitly arranged in writing with the bank. Personally, coming from a country where declining transactions is the default, I'd be shocked and angry to be stuck with an automatic transfer from another account. Angry enough to change banks if they won't immediately cease and desist. In addition to @mhoran_psprep answer, and inspired by @wayne's comment.  If the bank won't let you block automatic transfers between accounts, drop the bank like a hot potato They've utterly failed basic account security principles, and shouldn't be trusted with anyone's money. It's not the bank's money, and you're the only one that can authorize any kind of transfer out.  I limit possible losses through debit and credit cards very simply. I keep only a small amount on each (~$500), and manually transfer more on an as needed basis. Because there is no automatic transfers to these cards, I can't lose everything in the checking account, even temporarily. Generally in a SWIFT transaction, there are 4 Banks involved [at times 2 or 3 or at times even 6]. The 4 Banks are Sender [Originator of Payment]; Sender's correspondent, Receiver's Correspondent, Receiver [Or beneficiary Bank] All these 4 Banks charge for making a transfer. In SHA; the charges of Sender and Senders correspondent are levied to Customer [who initiates the payment] and the Receivers Correspondent and Receiver charges are to beneficiary. In OUR all the charges of 4 Banks are to the Customer and in BEN all the charges of 4 Banks are to the Beneficiary. Or am I wrong to assume that transaction costs would be covered by that 15USD and in reality the 15USD are on top of transaction costs? As explained above it is incorrect assumption. In this case, the charges will be more. So best is go with SHA. This gives a better view of charges. On a EUR to USD transactions, there would typically be only 3 Banks in the chain. And depending on the Bank, it could also be just 2 Banks involved. Yes this is a huge security loophole and many banks will do nothing to refund if you are scammed.  For example for business accounts some Wells Fargo branches say you must notify within 24 hours of any check withdrawal or the loss is yours.  Basically banks don't care - they are a monopoly system and you are stuck with them.  When the losses and complaints get too great they will eventually implement the European system of electronic transfers - but the banks don't want to be bothered with that expense yet.   Sure you can use paypal - another overpriced monopoly - or much better try Dwolla or bitcoin. I can only imagine the regulatory difficulty you're going through, and for that I empathize. First, bankers everywhere mostly do not know if a bank policy is due to regulation or internal rules.  Other banks may be more flexible, but only the most reputable should be used. Re Paypal, they first deposit 1 USD and then withdraw it, but things may be different in Cyprus.  Also, Paypal now has debit cards, so if Paypal is permitted to issue cards in Russia then it could presumably be used in Cyprus.  Again, local regulation notwithstanding.  Paypal now has phone support at the very back of their site, so I suggest a call to them. In countries that permit, Western Union can be used to wire money into an account from cash. The Bitcoin route should be used as a last resort.  You could wake up tomorrow losting 25% easy.  The regulations are a distant second compared to this problem. With all of the above methods, there will be varying delays from days to weeks. You should do both: Contact the bank abroad and tell them the payment may have been misdirected and ask what they can do to trace or recall the payment. Contact HSBC, show them the sheet with the incorrect details, and ask them to help you fix the problem. International payments are generally hard to trace and fix so it's important to get things going from both ends as soon as possible. Make sure you keep the sheet or a copy of it so you have evidence you can use later if it comes to a dispute with HSBC. Keep any other documentation or letters you get from them. Also, if you're not already doing it, start keeping notes of what's happening as it happens so you have a contemporaneous record of events - those are generally much more convincing to other people than anything that was constructed from memory a long time after the event. "Under no circunstances will the bank keep the money for itself. Keeping the money is considered Unjust Enrichment: A general equitable principle that no person should be allowed to profit at another's expense without making restitution for the reasonable value of any property, services, or other benefits that have been unfairly received and retained. The banks will attempt to, in order: Wait for some time: Generally, a time frame of three to five years with no customer-initiated activity sends an account into dormancy. The amount of time that must lapse depends on the [US] state in which the bank account was opened. Attempt to contact the account holder: (...) the bank must try to notify the account holder. If the customer does not respond within a certain amount of time, the balance on the account will be turned over to the state. Turn over the money to the government: In a process what is called “escheating” an account, banks are required to turn over funds from the inactive account to the state treasury. Once the account is sent to the state, the funds are held as unclaimed property. At this point the account no longer exists so far the bank is concerned.  To reclaim your money, you will have to contact your state for the instructions on how to get your money back. You’ll need to complete and submit a claim form along with the necessary identification. If you happen to have unclaimed property held by the state, you can begin the retrieval process by visiting www.unclaimed.org. For a foreigner, it is not unreasonable that the bank would attempt to contact the diplomatic body of the country of origin in step 2, but that may be subject to bank policy. There is some paperwork the bank needs to do to ""escheat"" the account and properly transfer the money to the state." The reason they want the transaction to go through is because they make money that way. Remember the overdraft protection might incur a fee. If it does their experience may show them that the fee is a greater source of profit when balanced against the losses incurred because of insufficient funds. Even free overdraft transactions are limited. If they didn't want to make money they would have a way to make sure that multiple overdrafts in a short time window wouldn't require multiple protection events. Remember each time they transfer funds they only bring you to zero. As it is now the coffee you buy after putting money on your subway fare card might also trigger an overdraft transfer. For the US government, they've just credited Person B with a Million USD and haven't gained anything (afterall, those digits are intangible and don't really have a value, IMO). Two flaws in this reasoning: The US government didn't do anything. The receiving bank credited the recipient. If the digits are intangible, such that they haven't gained anything, they haven't lost anything either. In practice, the role of governments in the transfer is purely supervisory. The sending bank debits the sender's account and the receiving bank credits the recipient's account. Every intermediary makes some money on this transaction because the cost to the sender exceeds the credit to the recipient. The sending bank typically receives a credit to their account at a correspondent bank. The receiving bank typically receives a debit from their account at a correspondent bank. If a bank sends lots of money, eventually its account at its correspondent will run dry. If a bank receives lots of money, eventually its account at its correspondent will have too much money. This is resolved with domestic payments, sometimes handled by governmental or quasi-governmental agencies. In the US, banks have an account with the federal reserve and adjust balances there. The international component is handled by the correspondent bank(s). They also internally will credit and debit. If they get an imbalance between two currencies they can't easily correct, they will have to sell one currency to buy the other. Fortunately, worldwide currency exchange is extremely efficient. A bank is insolvent when it can no longer meet its short-term obligations.  In this example, the bank is insolvent when depositors withdraw more cash than the bank can pay out. In this case, it's probably something in the range of $600-700k, because the bank can borrow money from other banks using assets as collateral. In the US, we manage this risk in a few ways. First, FDIC insurance provides a level of assurance that in a worst-case scenario, most depositors will have access to their money guaranteed by the government. This prevents bank panics and reduces the demand for cash. The risk that remains is the risk that you brought up in your scenario -- bad debt or investments that are valued inappropriately. We mitigate this risk by giving the Federal Reserve and in some instances the US Treasure the ability to provide nearly unlimited capital to get over short/mid-term issues brought on by the market. In cases of long-term, structural issues with the bank balance sheets, regulators like the FDIC, Federal Reserve and others have the ability to assume control of the bank and sell off its assets to other, stronger institutions. The current financial regime has its genesis in the bank panics of the 1890's, when the shift from an agricultural based economy (where no capital is available until the crops come in!) to an industrial economy revealed the weakness of the unregulated model where ad hoc groups of banks backed each other up. Good banks were being destroyed by panics until a trusted third party (JP Morgan) stepped in, committed capital and make personal guarantees. As far as I can see, this is an issue of the bank's policy rather than some legal regulation. That means that you'll need to work it out with the bank.  To give you a couple of ideas to work with when you talk with them, maybe something from this list will work: Good luck! Bank have their own Capital, Deposits from Depositors and lend money to Borrowers.   In a liquidity problem, it is typically that either the Borrowers are taking time to repay [they are not yet defaulters] or there is more pressure on withdrawals from Depositors or there is a short term of mismatch between deposits and loans ... in all these valid scenarios FED does lend out the banks to met these short terms obligations.   Banks fail when the losses are actually booked in comparison to the overall Capital or loss would materialize ... for example the Mortgage crisis in US meant that quite a few Banks the actual loss had materialized or would have any ways materialized. In such situations the short term leading does not help and they would burn it out anyways as the borrowers are not paying back any time soon ... *sigh* So I guess you don't understand why they would care about no risk....  If the sub company fails, but had no debt, then the parent company only loses whatever money they invested in the sub company  If the sub company fails and had debt:    The parent company is responsible for those debts and must pay them if in the agreement with the bank the parent company is responsible.    The parent company is not responsible for those debts if in the agreement with the banks, they did not agree to be collateral if the sub company went bankrupt. Not likely that a bank would agree to this though. They might even try to sue the parent company so they could get some reimbursement. "Yesterday I have received a call from my local bank. They told the the payment had arrived, but the money sender failed to specify my account number. They have only specified SWIFT code and my address. And in order to receive my money, money sender has to send an additional SWIFT message, where my account number must be specified. And the money transfer will remain ""frozen"" (or ""blocked"") until such a message would be received. In this case normally your local bank has to send a SWIFT MT199 to the sending Bank that the account number quoted is missing. The Sending Bank would contact the company and send back a SWIFT message with required info."