Citi mistakenly credits $81 trillion to customer account

Citigroup mistakenly credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account instead of $280 before reversing the transaction hours later, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The error took place last April and was missed by a payments employee and a second worker before it was cleared to process the following day, according to the newspaper, which cited an internal account and two people familiar with the matter. 

A third employee discovered the error an hour and a half after the payment was processed; the transaction was reversed several hours later, the Financial Times said.

No funds left the bank and the “near miss” was disclosed to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the report said.

“Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry,” a Citigroup spokesperson stated in an email. “Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank.” 

The incident did not affect the bank or the customer, Citi added.

The bank experienced 10 near misses of $1 billion or more in 2024, down from 13 such cases the prior year, according to the FT, which cited an internal report.