Appalling Payment Reversal Service from FNB

I made a retirement annuity top-up payment on the 26th of Feb 2023 using the FNB app. The payment was supposed to go to Professional Provident Society Retirement Annuity Fund (PPS) and when I searched this under the public recipients options on the FNB app, only Professional Provident Fund appeared which I assumed is the Professional Provident Society Retirement Annuity Fund but, because of the length of the name, it was reduced to Professional Provident Fund. PPS contacted me a couple of days later saying that they had not yet received the funds and that the account number on the proof of payment document is not theirs.

FNB initially informed me that there was nothing that they can do as the payment had already gone through. I contacted FNB again as I was not satisfied with this answer and was told to complete the Payment Reversal Form.

I submitted this and after a couple of days they returned informing me that that they could not recover the funds from PPS and that my application had been unsuccessful. I indicated to them that they had tried to recover the funds from the wrong account whereupon they said that I had provided them with the wrong information, to which I rep**** with screenshots from the application form and proof of payment that the information is correct and they had made the mistake.

Another couple of days past and they rep**** that the outcome of the application was unsuccessful again as the funds were paid into an invalid account. I rejected this outcome for the following reasons: 1) FNB noted that the recipient’s account number provided in the Payment Reversal Form is invalid and does not exist with the recipient bank, however, if the account is invalid, why is it on FNB's public recipients list? 2) If the account is invalid, surely the payment would have been unsuccessful, but it shows that the transaction was successful on the FNB app’s payment history. 3) If the account is invalid, where did the money go? If Standard Bank (where the account is held) cannot allocate that money due to the account being invalid then they have to return it. 4) FNB also noted that "FNB has tried to contact you to verify the information with no success". I was never contacted by FNB in this regard and all forms of communications were initiated by me so that statement is not true.

I normally make the additional provident fund contributions to get a tax benefit and this episode with FNB has potentially lost me R60 000 – R100 000 in tax benefits, never mind the actual funds, which is significantly more than that.

I have also contacted Standard Bank (where the account is held) but they cannot provide details of the bank account due to the POPI act.