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Court: Restitute the Unjust Enrichment
[2022-07-05]

   

Alipay Transfer to Wrong Beneficiary Account   Court: Restitute the Unjust Enrichment

Electronic payment greatly benefits our daily life. The transfer can be completed immediately with a simple tap. However, there are also recurrent stories of "butterfingers": accidentally entering the wrong account number and transferring the payment to the wrong person...
[Case Review]

On March 30, 2021, the plaintiff, Lin, intended to transfer a payment to the Alipay account "1381648XXXX" designated by the outsider, Li, but mistakenly entered the Alipay account number as "1391648XXXX". Since the payment was a small-value transfer of 2,000 yuan, Alipay didn't prompt Lin to enter the real name of the beneficiary. After the transfer was completed, Lin didn't check with Li and the wrong transfer was not found.
On April 2, 2021, Lin made another transfer to Li's Alipay account as agreed. Without hesitation, Lin transferred 24,357 yuan to the saved Alipay account of "1391648XXXX" and didn't receive the prompt to enter the real name of the beneficiary, either, due to the previous transfer history.      

Soon, Li found that the two payments had not been received yet. After checking, it turned out that Lin had entered the wrong Alipay account number and transferred the payments to another person's account.

After fruitless request for restitution, Lin entrusted a lawyer to check with Alipay Company and found that the "1391648XXXX" account was registered by Ping in real name. So, Lin filed a lawsuit to the Fengxian District People's Court of Shanghai ("Shanghai Fengxian Court"), requesting Ping to return all the money.

[Case Study]

After the trial, the Shanghai Fengxian Court held that the plaintiff, Lin, had mistakenly transferred the payments to Ping's Alipay account due to wrong input of the account number. Such payments should constitute unjust enrichment because the defendant had obtained it without a legal basis. Lin, a party who thus suffered a loss, is entitled to request the enriched person to return the benefit. Therefore, Lin's claim was supported and the defendant, Ping, was ordered to restitute the unjust enrichment of 26,357 yuan within 10 days after the effective date of judgment.

[Relevant Laws]

Civil Code of the People's Republic of China

Article 122 Where a person obtains unjust interests at the expense of another person's loss without a legal cause, the person thus harmed is entitled to request the enriched person to make restitution.

Article 985 Where a person is unjustly enriched without a legal basis, the person who thus suffers a loss is entitled to request the enriched person to return the benefit, unless under any of the following circumstances:

(1) the payment is made for performing a moral obligation;

(2) the payment is made to satisfy an obligation not yet due; or

(3) the payment is made to an obligation knowing that there is no obligation to pay.

 

(Authors: Xu Sida, Mao Zhenya, Shanghai Fengxian Court)

 

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