How do wire transfers work? What makes them so irreversible?
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You can’t reverse it because there’s no “middle man” who can stop/reverse the transaction.
With things like Paypal, Venmo, or credit cards you’ve got the transaction company in the middle where the money sits for minutes/hours/days before it settles out. They can pretty easily undo it.
A wire goes from one bank to another. You *need* the account holder’s permission to remove money from an account, except under very specific circumstances (otherwise you wouldn’t trust your bank). Once you make the transfer, the money is in the other person’s account. Your bank can’t take it out because it’s not in your bank anymore. Their bank won’t take it out because they don’t have the account owner’s permission. “I screwed up” isn’t a good enough reason for the other bank to pull money from somebody else’s account…they have no idea if that’s true, nor do they care…you deposited money into an account there and they’re paid to protect *their* clients’ money, not yours.
This is why it’s absolutely essential to make sure the information is correct *before* you wire money.
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