Citibank mistakenly transfers $81 trillion to customer instead of $280, transaction within hours
Citibank mistakenly transferred $81 trillion (over Rs 7,000 lakh crore) to a client instead of $280 (approximately Rs 24,500) in April last year, Financial Times reported. The error was corrected within hours.
The oversight involved two employees who failed to notice the incorrect transaction.
A third employee detected the mistake about 90 minutes after it was processed.
Citibank classified the incident as a “near miss” and reported it to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to the report. No funds actually left the bank.
A Citigroup spokesperson told Bloomberg that such a transaction “could not actually have been executed.”
They explained that Citi’s internal controls quickly identified the error between two ledger accounts, allowing the bank to reverse the entry.
“Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank,” the spokesperson added, clarifying that neither the client nor the bank was affected.
According to Financial Times, Citi recorded 10 near misses of $1 billion or more in 2023—down from 13 the previous year.
The report noted that such large-scale errors remain rare across the US banking industry.
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