HiFX Europe Limited · DRN-6250327

The complaint Mr H complained that HiFX Europe Limited trading as Xe failed to complete his international payment and held his funds. Mr H said that when the funds were returned to him, the amount was approximately £1,000 less than he was expecting. What happened On 21 March Mr H contacted Xe via webchat because the payment he made on 15 March for $21,000 had not been received. Xe asked Mr H to confirm the payee account details he’d used were correct, which he did. Xe said it would need to investigate this further, as the funds should have been received. On 23 March Xe contacted Mr H to confirm that the payment had reached the recipients bank but was “on hold – pending receipt of documents”. Xe said it recommended that Mr H liaised with the recipient and ask them to contact their bank to understand why the funds were on hold. Mr H contacted Xe to inform it that the recipient bank requested a sealed/stamped payment confirmation document to release the funds. Xe said it couldn’t provide this but said if the recipient’s bank won’t allow the funds to be credited, then it could request a recall. On 1 April Mr H asked for Xe to recall the funds. Xe told him that there is no guarantee the recall will be successful as the receiver must accept the request. Xe also said there aren’t set timescales for this to be processed. On 10 April Xe confirmed that the recall had been successful and $20,976.12 had been returned to his account. It explained that $23.88 had been applied for the bank charges associated with returning the payment. Xe asked if Mr H wanted to attempt the payment again or refund the money back to his account. Mr H called Xe to find out how much he would receive back to his account if the dollars were converted back to sterling. The advisor confirmed he would lose approximately £400 due to the exchange rate differences. On 15 April Mr H said he wanted to resend the funds but this time with a lower amount, to test if this reaches the beneficiary. Mr H believed that the issue was down to the amount of the payment. On 16 April Xe confirmed the lower amount had been sent and the remaining funds were held in dollars in Mr H’s Xe account. On 12 May the payment was returned, this time due to incorrect beneficiary name.

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Xe asked Mr H what he wanted to do next, as it couldn’t hold the funds indefinitely. Mr H agreed for Xe to sell back the money for his transfer and received two credits into his account. Mr H raised a complaint because he’d been able to successfully make the payment using the same beneficiary details via another payment provider. He said he lost out on approximately £1,000 due to the buyback exchange rate and as he was able to make the payment elsewhere, this must be an issue that Xe caused. In its final response, Xe said that the second payment was rejected by the beneficiary bank due to an incorrect beneficiary name. Xe said it didn’t make any errors because it sent the payment as Mr H instructed therefore didn’t uphold the complaint. Mr H remained unhappy so brought his complaint to this service. He provided evidence of successful payments made to the same beneficiary with other providers. The investigator said Xe completed the payment correctly, using Mr H’s instruction therefore didn’t identify it made any errors. The investigator also highlighted that the evidence of the successful payments made by the other banks, had a different International Bank Account Number (IBAN). Mr H didn’t agree and said if there is a discrepancy with the IBAN then this must be because Xe did not use the correct details. Mr H said that there is a lack of transparency when sending a payment online, as the documentation provided to him at the time did not display the beneficiary IBAN, so there was no way to verify the information. Mr H doesn’t believe that Xe has fulfilled its responsibilities regarding Consumer Duty and Payment Services Regulations. He asked for an Ombudsman to decide things. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. I would first like to explain that it is not this service’s role to tell a business to change its processes and procedures. I will focus my decision on whether I think Xe have acted fairly and reasonably. Mr H has confirmed that the IBAN details used to send his payment of $21,000 should have been the same as those used when he processed the payment with his other provider. From my review of the evidence, the IBAN details are different. Xe is a user-initiated platform in which Mr H created the beneficiary and confirmed the payment details for Xe to process this payment. Therefore, I think it’s the responsibility of the sender to ensure that these are correct. Xe have provided evidence from its systems which shows the details input by Mr H when creating the beneficiary online. The IBAN input by Mr H matches the IBAN used to send the payment. This is the same IBAN that the intermediary bank used therefore I am satisfied that Xe processed the payment as instructed by Mr H.

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Mr H says that Xe didn’t provide him with confirmation of the IBAN in order for him to verify the details. Xe have provided a copy of the transaction confirmation sent to Mr H and I’ve confirmed it includes the beneficiary’s name and IBAN, both of which match the audit history of what Mr H entered online. Xe also provided an example of their online payment system, and I can see that once Mr H entered the IBAN, this isn’t presented again for him to verify. Whilst I accept Mr H didn’t see the IBAN details once he first entered them, I think if Mr H wasn’t sure the payment information wasn’t correct, he could have returned to the previous screen and checked the details before proceeding. I’m assuming Mr H thinks he would have noticed the incorrect IBAN details had the payment confirmation screen have included them. But when Mr H initially raised the issue to Xe via the webchat, it asked him to confirm that he had used the correct account details and Mr H confirmed that he had checked and they were correct. So, I’m not persuaded that Mr H would have identified the discrepancy had the online system reconfirmed the IBAN details. I don’t think Xe have made any errors when processing the initial payment of $21,000. Next, I have considered if Xe made any errors once it was aware that the payment was being held. When Mr H called Xe, the advisor recommended that he ask the beneficiary to speak to their bank to understand why the payment was on hold, as it could see it had been received. Once Mr H had done this, he called Xe to explain that the beneficiary’s bank required a sealed/stamped payment confirmation. Xe couldn’t provide this, but I don’t think that Xe acted unreasonably as the usual process would be for the banks to communicate via swift message. Regardless of this, we now know that even if Xe had provided the requested document, the payment still wouldn’t have been successful because the wrong IBAN had been used. When Mr H asked Xe to recall the payment, it did so the same day. Once the recall was successful, it notified Mr H and asked him what steps he would like to take next. Mr H was of the belief that the initial payment was unsuccessful due to the amount being too high. I can’t see from the evidence that this was information provided by Xe and it seems this was provided by the beneficiary’s bank. I don’t think Xe was aware of the reason why the payment was held at this point. Mr H instructed Xe to make a payment of $3,000 to the same beneficiary and the payment was sent the next day. I’m satisfied that Xe didn’t cause any unnecessary delay here. When the second payment was returned Xe was informed that this was due to an incorrect beneficiary name. Whilst I acknowledge that sending a second payment caused further delay and frustration for Mr H, I don’t think this was caused by Xe’s actions as it wasn’t until the payment was returned the second time it became aware of the reason why it was unsuccessful. I appreciate that Mr H made attempts to go between the beneficiary bank and Xe to try and resolve this issue and I can understand that this would have been frustrating. I agree that Mr H experienced inconvenience and I’m sorry to hear that. However, it’s not always the case that inconvenience is caused by the business doing something wrong. Sometimes it’s

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down to circumstances beyond its control, and I think that’s what has happened here. To conclude, I don’t think that Xe acted unfairly or unreasonably processing Mr H’s payment’s therefore, I won’t be asking it to take any action. My final decision My final decision is that I do not uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr H to accept or reject my decision before 26 May 2026. Jessica Lees Ombudsman

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