15 USC 1693o-1: Remittance Transfer Disclosures and Cancellation

15 USC 1693o-1 is the federal statute that governs remittance transfers, meaning money sent electronically from someone in the United States to a recipient in another country. It requires providers to disclose the true cost, exchange rate, and delivery date of a transfer before the sender pays, gives the sender 30 minutes to cancel, and gives the sender 180 days to report an error and get either a refund or the correct amount resent. Congress added the section to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act through the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 to close a gap in consumer protection for international transfers.¹

Which Transfers and Providers Are Covered

A remittance transfer is any electronic transfer of funds a sender in the United States asks a provider to send to a designated recipient in a foreign country. The sender does not need to hold an account with the provider. The definition sweeps in wire services, bank-initiated international wires, and mobile apps that send money abroad.¹

A “remittance transfer provider” is any person or company that offers these transfers in the normal course of business. Banks, credit unions, money-transfer companies, and fintech platforms all qualify. Two carve-outs narrow the reach: transfers of $15 or less are excluded, and providers that handle 500 or fewer remittance transfers per calendar year sit inside a safe harbor that excuses them from most obligations under this section. A provider that crosses the 500-transfer threshold mid-year gets up to six months to come into compliance.²

What the Provider Must Disclose Before You Pay

The disclosure regime is the backbone of the statute. Providers must give the sender written information they can keep at two stages: before payment and at the time of payment.¹

Before you pay anything, the provider must show you the amount being sent in the currency you are paying, the fees it charges and the taxes it collects (identified separately), the exchange rate it will apply (rounded to at least two decimal places), any covered third-party fees deducted from the amount received, and the total the recipient will actually receive in foreign currency after all deductions. That final figure, the total to recipient, is what lets you comparison-shop between providers.³

At the time of payment, the provider must issue a receipt repeating that information and adding the promised delivery date, the recipient’s name and phone or address if you supplied them, and a statement of your error-resolution rights along with contact details for the provider, the relevant state regulator, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The promised delivery date and total-to-recipient figure on the receipt become the benchmarks against which any later error is measured.⁴

When Estimates Are Allowed

Banks and credit unions sometimes cannot pin down the exact exchange rate or fees in advance, particularly when a transfer routes through correspondent banks in the recipient’s country. The statute lets insured depository institutions and insured credit unions disclose reasonably accurate estimates instead of exact figures, but only when the transfer is made from the sender’s account and the provider genuinely cannot determine the final amounts for reasons beyond its control.⁴ Estimates are not a shortcut for providers who find precise calculation inconvenient.

Your 30-Minute Cancellation Right

You can cancel a remittance transfer within 30 minutes of making payment if two conditions are met: the provider can identify the specific transfer from your cancellation request, and the recipient has not yet picked up or received the funds. The 30-minute window runs regardless of the provider’s business hours. A midnight transfer carries the same cancellation right as a noon transfer.⁵

When you cancel in time, the provider must refund the full amount within three business days, including all fees and any taxes it collected (to the extent refunding taxes is not prohibited by law). A cancellation request given to a provider’s agent counts as received by the provider itself at the moment the agent gets it. Providers can offer a longer window voluntarily. They cannot offer a shorter one.

Reporting an Error: 180 Days to Notify, 90 Days to Resolve

You have 180 days from the promised delivery date to notify the provider of an error. That window is substantially longer than the 60-day period that applies to standard electronic fund transfer disputes.¹

An error includes being charged more than the disclosed amount, the recipient getting less than the total-to-recipient figure on the receipt, funds not being available by the promised delivery date, a computational mistake by the provider, or the provider failing to respond to a documentation request. There are important exceptions. If the provider disclosed an estimated exchange rate under the safe harbor and the actual rate differed, that difference is generally not an error. A late delivery caused by fraud screening, Bank Secrecy Act compliance, extraordinary circumstances, or an incorrect account number you supplied also does not count.⁶

Notice can be oral or written. Once the provider receives it, the statute gives it up to 90 days to investigate and resolve the complaint. Where an error occurred, you choose the remedy: a full refund of what you paid (including fees) for any portion not properly transmitted, or delivery of the correct amount to the recipient at no additional cost. The provider cannot substitute a refund when you asked for the money to be resent. If the provider concludes no error occurred, it must send you a written explanation addressing your specific complaint.¹

The Provider Is Liable for Its Agents

Providers are responsible for violations committed by their agents, authorized delegates, or affiliates acting on their behalf. A money-transfer company operating through thousands of retail locations cannot disclaim responsibility when a clerk fails to give the required disclosures or mishandles a cancellation request. A provider can raise a bona fide error defense if it shows by a preponderance of the evidence that a violation was unintentional and happened despite procedures reasonably designed to prevent it, but the defense is meant for institutions that had real compliance procedures in place.

What You Can Recover If the Rules Are Broken

A sender harmed by a violation of 15 USC 1693o-1 can sue under 15 USC 1693m for actual damages, statutory damages of between $100 and $1,000 per individual action regardless of proven harm, and reasonable attorney fees and costs if you prevail. The fee-shifting provision is what makes smaller claims economically feasible.⁷

In a class action, total statutory recovery is capped at the lesser of $500,000 or 1% of the provider’s net worth, with no floor on what any individual class member receives. Courts weigh the frequency, persistence, nature, and intentionality of the violations when setting statutory damages. You have one year from the violation to file suit.⁷

If unauthorized transfers are involved, the general EFTA liability caps also protect you: $50 if you report within two business days of discovering the loss, up to $500 if you report between two and 60 days, and potentially the full loss if you wait longer.⁸

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforces this section, investigates violations, and writes the implementing rules found in Regulation E, Subpart B. Its actions have targeted providers for missing disclosures, mishandled error resolution, and undisclosed fees on international transfers.⁹

What This Statute Does Not Cover

Section 1693o-1 applies only to consumer transfers from the United States to a recipient in a foreign country. Purely domestic transfers, no matter how they are initiated, are outside its reach. Transfers of $15 or less are excluded by rule, and securities and commodities transfers are carved out. Because the EFTA as a whole covers consumer accounts, business-to-business international transfers are not remittance transfers. Cryptocurrency transfers that do not run through a traditional financial institution also fall outside the statute, though a crypto-funded transfer processed by a regulated provider may be covered depending on how the transaction is structured.²

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1693o-1 – Remittance Transfers
2
eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.30 – Remittance Transfer Definitions
3
eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.31 – Disclosures
4
govinfo.gov. 15 U.S.C. 1693o-1 – Remittance Transfers
5
eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.34 – Procedures for Cancellation and Refund of Remittance Transfers
6
eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.33 – Procedures for Resolving Errors
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1693m – Civil Liability
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1693g – Consumer Liability
9
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Enforcement Actions