The Fraud Clinic · How money moves
Why some money can be pulled back, and some cannot.
A credit card, a pre-authorized debit or an e‑transfer not yet deposited can sometimes be pulled back. Cash, gift cards, cryptocurrency and a deposited e‑transfer almost never can. Whether money comes back depends on how it was paid, which was set before anything went wrong, not on what you did.
Nobody can reverse a payment they are no longer holding.
We think money comes back for one of two reasons.
The first is that somebody in the middle is still holding it and agrees to send it back.
- On a credit card payment, the card company can take the money back from the seller.
- An e‑transfer sits in the middle until the other person collects it.
- A cash envelope has nobody in the middle, so nobody can pull one back.
The second is a written rule saying who pays when a payment was not made by the account holder. Those rules exist only for cards and pre-authorized debits, and they turn on one question.
Did somebody take it, or did you send it?
Banks and card companies treat a payment taken and a payment sent as two different events.
- Somebody took it means a payment you did not make and did not approve.
- You sent it means you moved the money yourself, for a reason someone gave you that turned out to be false.
The written rules were built for payments somebody took.
- An e‑transfer
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What it is. Money sent by email or text through your own online banking. Your bank takes it out of your account at once, then waits for the other person to collect it.
Whether it can be pulled back. The sender can cancel an e‑transfer from their transaction history until it is deposited. Once one has been deposited, Interac says there is no way to reverse the transaction.
Where the other side has autodeposit switched on, there is no waiting, so nothing to cancel.
- A credit card
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What it is. The card company pays the other side and bills you afterwards. The money that moved was the card company’s, so there is somebody in the middle to ask.
Whether it can be pulled back. In our reading, a credit card has the clearest written rule of any route. For a card issued by a federally regulated institution, the most a cardholder can be held to for use they did not permit is $50.
The exception is gross negligence in looking after the card and its details, which Quebec calls gross fault.
Federally regulated means a bank. Most credit unions are not, though a few are; ask yours whether it is.
- A debit card, or a withdrawal
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What it is. Your own money, leaving your own account, with nobody in the middle at any point.
Whether it can be pulled back. The bank does not pull the money back. You file a claim with the bank that issued the card, as soon as you know.
The Canadian Code of Practice for Consumer Debit Card Services sets the deadline. The institution that issued your personal identification number (PIN) must respond to your claim as soon as possible, and no later than 10 business days.
If you helped the scammer without meaning to, and you cooperate with the bank, you do not have to pay the loss. If you told somebody the PIN, or wrote it on the card, you may have to.
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What it is. Permission signed once, letting a company take an amount out of the account on a schedule. The hydro bill and the insurance premium usually work this way.
Whether it can be pulled back. Yes. Ask your bank within 90 calendar days of the day it came out. You sign a declaration saying which of five grounds applies.
Telling the company in writing to stop is a separate step, and under Payments Canada’s Rule H1 they have 30 days to cancel the arrangement.
- A wire, or a bank draft
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What it is. A wire is a bank-to-bank transfer built for speed and for being final. A bank draft is closer to a cheque the bank has already paid for on your behalf.
Whether it can be pulled back. Call your own bank as soon as you know and ask them to try a recall.
Payments Canada says a wire is final once the money is in the other account, so the call cannot wait. A bank draft cannot be cancelled once handed over, but one still in your hands can go back to the branch, with its copy, for a refund.
- Cash, or a gift card
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What it is. Cash handed to somebody at the door, couriered, or loaded onto prepaid cards and read out over the phone. Afterwards nothing connects any of it to a person.
Whether it can be pulled back. No. Nothing at the bank or anywhere else can reverse it. Still call your local police the same day.
If a courier collected it, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says to contact local police as soon as possible. Tell them what the person looked like and what they drove.
- Cryptocurrency
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What it is. Money that exists only as an entry in a shared online record. Sending it is closer to handing over cash than to a bank transfer, with no company in the middle.
Whether it can be pulled back. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre’s own wording is that once the transaction is completed it is very unlikely to be reversed.
Even so, tell the trading site or wallet the money went through, and the bank it came from, straight away. The British Columbia Securities Commission asks for both.
a recall the sending bank trying to pull a payment back before it is collected
You ask your own institution to attempt it; you cannot do it yourself. Whether it works depends on how the money went and whether it has already been collected. An Interac e-Transfer not yet deposited is not recalled but cancelled, which the sender can do directly.
autodeposit an e‑transfer setting that puts the money straight in, with nothing to accept
Without it a transfer waits to be picked up, and that wait is the only window in which the sending bank has something to pull back. Switched on at the receiving end, there is no wait and no window. It is the recipient who turns it on, not the sender.
the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre where scams get reported nationally, which is not the same as being investigated
It gathers reports from across the country so that patterns can be seen. Your own case belongs to the local police force, and the Centre does not work it. It cannot move money either.
Being asked to pay a way that cannot be pulled back is the warning.
We think scammers choose the routes that are hardest to pull back, on purpose. A gift card, a courier at the door, a wire and a crypto transfer have almost nothing in common except that each is hard to pull back.
If someone who contacted you asks you to pay by gift card, courier, wire or crypto, stop and call back on a number you already had. The request is the warning, and it comes before any money moves.
What stops it, stage by stage
The stages of a scam are the conversation that gets somebody to move the money, from the first phone call to what happens after the money is gone. Each stage can be stopped a different way.
- 01 Where they got your information
- 02 The stories they use
- 03 Why they pass every check
- 04 What they ask for
- 05 How the money leaves
- 06 Why it never stops at one payment
- 07 What happens after the money is gone
Nothing on this page recovers funds or tells you whether a company is real. I think I have been scammed says who does that, and by when.