Two different payment routes
If you sent a bank transfer to buy cryptocurrency or to fund a platform, that is a push payment made by you. UK reimbursement rules for authorised push payment fraud can apply to those transfers, and your bank is required to consider a claim on its merits.
If you paid by debit or credit card, your card provider may be able to raise a chargeback, and credit card payments may also carry protection under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act depending on how the payment was structured. Raise both routes with your provider rather than choosing one yourself.
What weakens a claim
- Delay. Time limits apply and evidence disappears, so report within days rather than weeks.
- Payments made after a warning from the bank was shown and dismissed, which the bank will take into account.
- Gaps in the account: missing screenshots, deleted chats, no record of what was promised.
- Additional payments made after the fraud became apparent, including fees paid to release funds.
What strengthens a claim
- A clear timeline of the approach, the platform used and each payment made, with dates.
- Chat and email records showing how you were persuaded, saved in full rather than cropped.
- Transaction hashes and receiving addresses for the cryptocurrency leg, showing where the funds went.
- An Action Fraud report reference.
- A written trace showing that funds reached a regulated service rather than vanishing, where that is the case.
If the bank declines
A refusal is not the end of the process. You can ask for the decision in writing with the reasons stated, use the bank's formal complaints procedure, and then refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free to consumers.
Evidence matters more at the ombudsman stage than at the first-response stage, which is why the documentation above is worth assembling even if the initial answer is no.
Where an investigation fits
We do not handle bank claims or represent you to a bank. What we produce is the onchain part of the picture: a verified path for the funds, the point at which the trail ends, and a plain-English summary a fraud team can check for itself.
That is useful where a bank or ombudsman wants to understand what happened after the money left the account, and it is honest about the limits — if the funds reached a privacy protocol or a dormant wallet, the report says so.
If you are looking at your own case rather than reading generally, our cryptocurrency investigation service explains how a case is scoped and worked, the asset tracing hub covers the network-specific work, and our overview of cryptocurrency scam recovery in the UK sets out what is realistic. Asset pages: USDT tracing, Bitcoin tracing and Ethereum tracing. You can also contact the investigations team directly.
Common questions
- Does it matter that I authorised the payment myself?
- No. UK reimbursement rules for authorised push payment fraud exist precisely because the victim made the payment. Being persuaded to authorise a transfer does not automatically disqualify a claim.
- How long do I have to claim?
- Report as soon as you realise, ideally the same day. Time limits differ between push payment claims, chargebacks and ombudsman referrals, and the practical evidence position worsens quickly.
- Can I claim if I bought the cryptocurrency on a legitimate exchange first?
- It is more complex, because the first payment bought an asset you received. The claim then focuses on the onward transfer, which is where a trace of the receiving address is most useful.
Have a case you want reviewed?
We scope at intake and tell you honestly whether the onchain data supports a traceable case.
Key terms in this guide
Plain-English definitions from the Wallsec glossary.