That's the whole point, legally the payment is explicitly considered "executed correctly" if it's credited acording to the account numbers (and not the names or

That's the whole point, legally the payment is explicitly considered "executed correctly" if it's credited acording to the account numbers (and not the names or addresses) provided by the originator; possibly (but I'm speculating) to avoid a nontrivial number of rejected payments because of typos and variations of spellings for company names. Actually, pretty much all relevant law for this thing is on this single page - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/752/regulation/90/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/752/regulation/90/ma... (with some additional info at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/752/regulation/83/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/752/regulation/83/ma... stating that the payer can't simply revoke the payment) The other account was the unique account matching the account number + sort code (this combination is presumably what Barclays deems the 'unique account number') - so that's "executed correctly" according to "Where a payment order is executed in accordance with the unique identifier, the payment order is deemed to have been correctly executed by each payment service provider involved in executing the payment order with respect to the payee specified by the unique identifier." The payer had also specified the name and address, but the law explicitly states that the bank is not liable for mismatches of the name or address, it's only required to execute it according to the account number. "(5) Where the payment service user provides information additional to that specified in regulation 43(2)(a) (information required prior to the conclusion of a single payment service contract) or paragraph 2(b) of Schedule 4 (prior general information for framework contracts), the payment service provider is liable only for the execution of payment transactions in accordance with the unique identifier provided by the payment service user. " is quite a mouthful but it essentially says that even if you provided extra information, that information can be ignored. However, the article implies that Barclays did not fulfil their requirements of "(3) The payee’s payment service provider must co-operate with the payer’s payment service provider in its efforts to recover the funds, in particular by providing to the payer’s payment service provider all relevant information for the collection of funds." which does seem to require them provide sufficient information to sue the mistaken recipient to return the money.