Consumer complaint received 2025-03-27 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem — 
Company: Chime Financial Inc
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/year>, I sent money stored from my debit card using the Chime app to another member, or so I thought, to my friend XXXX XXXX. I used the Chime app and their XXXX peer to peer service to send {$100.00}. this was the first time I sent a payment to this particular friend. While searching for her user name XXXX XXXX XXXX which her info had been given to me verbally, I began the search with XXXX XXXX and I saw XXXX result pop up XXXX XXXXXXXX and none other , so being the human that I am, seeing no other result, I selected this and sent {$100.00}. the system did not mention any other account related information. No additional info such as email, phone number, etc was shown. I sent the payment and my friend who was present at the moment, confirmed she had not received any payment within minutes of sending. So that's when I knew there was a problem. My account had been withdraw but her account did not have a new balance. So I called Chime customer service and after several redirects online while loading the right page, I got thru and requested to speak to an agent and I explained what was going on. They took a look at my account and asked me to confirm an email and phone number of the recipient. Being that my friend was face to face with me, she answered my question and thats when we came to the conclusion that my money had gone elsewhere, not into my friends account, but that if a complete stranger. Of all possibilities Chime had another member, XXXX XXXX with an almost identical user name to my friend. The user name XXXX XXXXXXXX and my money had been sent to that account. The Chime agent suggested I cancel the transaction, which that option was not available to me because the payment was never pending, it appeared to have been completed immediately after sending. XXXX was to request a refund of the transaction and that option was also not available because there was no option or button on the transaction page that led to that. So the only thing left for me to do was to submit an additional money request to the stranger in the amount of {$100.00} and in the notes adding " refund for payment made in error ''. The agent sounding very confident that my issue can be fixed this way and last advising me to file a dispute left me with hopes of seeing my money back soon. I received an email to add supporting documentation to my dispute and I sent screenshots with explanations of what went wrong. I followed up XXXX  a day and XXXX days later it was denied. I requested a copy of the findings and requested an appeal which Chime refers to as " rebuttal '' and that was also denied. XXXX days later and no response from the member who has my funds and nothing new from Chime bank. The denial letter from Chime states that they found no error. The error exists, member sent payment to wrong member using XXXX and evidence I uploaded supports this. Due to lack of security feature to avoid members from making a common error. It can happen to anybody and more often than not with almost identical usernames on the app. 

My friends user name XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX User name where my payment went in error XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX Now look at how common this mistake can be and low security feature on Chimes part to avoid these errors. 

XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief