What To Do When a Money Transfer Fails in Tanzania (2026)

Almost everyone who moves money in Tanzania has had the moment. The confirmation SMS does not arrive. Or it arrives, the money has left your balance, and the person on the other end says nothing came. Or the ATM counted, clicked, and gave you nothing while your account was debited anyway.

The instinct is to wait and hope it corrects itself. Sometimes it does. But waiting quietly is the single most expensive thing you can do, because Tanzanian law puts your bank or mobile money provider on a clock — and some of those clocks run in hours, not days. If you do not start the clock by complaining, it never starts at all.

This guide explains exactly what the law requires, how long your provider has, and what to do when it misses the deadline.

First work out which kind of "failed" you are dealing with

Not every failure is the same problem, and the fix differs.

The money never left. Your balance is unchanged and no debit appears on your statement. This is usually a network timeout. Check your balance before you resend, because sending twice is one of the most common ways people lose money.

The money left and has not arrived. Your balance dropped, the recipient has nothing. This is the classic failed transfer and it is what the complaint rules below are built for.

The money arrived, but less than you sent. This is normally not a failure at all. Transfers carry provider charges and a statutory levy on electronic money transactions, and both are deducted along the way. Before complaining, check the tariff — our guide to reducing mobile money charges explains where the deductions come from and how to structure payments so you lose less to them.

The money arrived, but with the wrong person. You mistyped a digit. This is the hardest category, and it is covered further down.

You were tricked into sending it. Someone impersonated a relative, a landlord, or a supplier. This is fraud, not a failed transfer, and since May 2025 the law on who bears that loss has changed significantly.

Getting this classification right in the first five minutes saves you days, because it tells you what to say when you call.

The clock: how long your provider actually has

This is the part almost nobody knows. Regulation 46 of the Bank of Tanzania (Financial Consumer Protection) Regulations, 2019 says a financial service provider "shall, upon receipt complaint from the consumer respond to the consumer and resolve such complaint within the timeframe provided under the First Schedule".

That First Schedule was deleted and replaced in May 2025 by Government Notice No. 298. These are the current deadlines:

Read that first line again. A mobile money complaint must be resolved within 12 hours. Not acknowledged — resolved.

It is worth knowing that most of these deadlines were made longer in 2025, not shorter. Under the original 2019 Schedule, mobile financial services ran to 6 hours, card payments to 6 hours, and TISS and TIPS to 6 hours each. The 2025 revision doubled or quadrupled several of them and added new categories such as electronic transfers and international internet banking. So if you read an older article quoting six hours for mobile money, it is out of date.

Step one: complain to your own provider, and only your own provider

When a transfer crosses between two institutions — your bank to their mobile wallet, your wallet to their bank — people waste days being bounced between the two. The law settles this argument for you.

Regulation 58 provides that where a complaint involves more than one financial service provider, "the responsibility to resolve the matter shall solely be on the service provider who initiated the financial product or service."

In plain terms: complain to the provider you sent from. If your bank tells you to go and talk to the recipient's provider, that instruction is wrong, and you can say so. The 2025 Guidelines back this up with a working timetable — under clause 23, your provider must analyse the complaint and escalate it to the other institution within three working days, the other institution must supply the requested information within three working days, and it must resolve and report back within five working days.

The same principle covers agents. Under clause 13 of the Guidelines, your provider is responsible for complaints relating to its agents and third parties. If the failure happened at a kiosk or an agent's till, the complaint still belongs to the provider whose brand is on the sign, not to the individual agent. If you are choosing where to keep your money in the first place, how to open a bank account and our mobile money comparison are useful starting points.

Step two: get a reference number, and get it in writing

This is the step that decides whether you win.

Under clause 17 of the 2025 Guidelines, a provider must assign a unique registration number to every complaint on receipt, and must give that number to the complainant so the complaint can be tracked and followed up. Under clause 19, it must acknowledge receipt immediately and tell you the likely resolution timeline.

So when you call, do not hang up until you have:

• the complaint reference number;
• the date and time the complaint was lodged, because that is when the clock in the table above starts;
• the name of the person you spoke to;
• the transaction reference of the failed transfer, from your SMS or statement;
• confirmation of which deadline applies to your case.

Write all of it down. Send yourself a message with the details so it is timestamped. If you lodged the complaint by phone, clause 12 requires that telephone complaint channels be toll-free and that phone complaints still be recorded and stored — so there is a recording, and you are entitled to have the complaint treated as properly lodged.

That same clause 12 is worth memorising for another reason: a provider "shall not charge any cost, fee, or penalty to a consumer for accepting, handling, or resolving complaints." Nobody may charge you to report their own failure. Under clause 10(3), every provider must offer at least three channels for receiving complaints, so if the call centre is unreachable, the branch, the app, the website and the social media channels are all valid routes.

Step three: what must happen before the deadline expires

Your provider cannot simply let the clock run out.

Regulation 49(1) requires that if it is unable to resolve the complaint within the First Schedule time, it must notify both the Bank of Tanzania and you before the deadline expires, giving reasons for the delay and the measures being taken. Regulation 49(2) then gives it a limited extension: it must determine the matter "within the time not exceeding half of the period specified." A 12-hour mobile money complaint therefore becomes 18 hours in total, not an open-ended wait.

The investigation itself has rules too. Under clause 20(2) of the Guidelines, the complaint must be investigated by someone not directly involved in the matter, able to act independently and impartially — reinforcing regulation 47, which bars an officer who is a party to, or has an interest in, a complaint from processing it. And under regulation 48 as amended in 2025, once the provider has finally determined the complaint it must notify you of its decision in writing. Clause 22(2) says that written outcome must set out the decision, the reasons for it, and the further steps available to you.

If you are told "the system will reverse it eventually" and nothing is put in writing, the provider is not complying.

Step four: escalating to the Bank of Tanzania

If the deadline passes, or the answer is wrong, the complaint goes up. Regulation 49 as amended is blunt about it: where the complainant is not satisfied with the reasons advanced by the provider, "he shall refer the complaint to the Bank."

The timing matters, and it is tight. Under regulation 51(1):

• If your provider did not respond as required, you may take it to the Bank as soon as the deadline lapses — "but in any case, not later than fourteen days."
• If your provider responded and you are dissatisfied, you must lodge with the Bank within fourteen days from the date you received notification of the resolution.

Regulation 51(2) allows a late complaint if you can show good cause for missing the window, and the Bank's published guidance sets an outer limit of two years from when the cause of action arose. Do not rely on either. Fourteen days is the rule.

The Bank will only admit the complaint once certain conditions in regulation 52 are met: you must have taken it through your provider's process to finality, be dissatisfied with the outcome (or have had the deadline lapse without notification), the matter must not be before a court or tribunal, and you must have suffered financial loss or material inconvenience. The 2025 Guidelines add, at clause 25(3), that the complaint must not be vexatious or frivolous and that you must cooperate and not misrepresent the facts.

Clause 25(2) of the Guidelines lists the channels for lodging with the Bank during working hours: the SEMA NA BOT website, the SEMA NA BOT mobile application, the SEMA NA BOT toll-free number (IVR), the SEMA NA BOT chatbot, or any other acceptable method. The complaint form appended to the Regulations also gives complaints@bot.go.tz, delivery by hand to the Financial Consumer Protection Unit, and a complaints box in the Bank's reception area. The Bank's offices are at 16 Jakaya Kikwete Road, Dodoma (P.O. Box 2303), and it works 0800–1300 and 1400–1700, Monday to Friday. You may complain in English or Kiswahili — clause 32 requires providers to work in either.

What the Bank of Tanzania can actually order

This is not a suggestion box. Once the Bank takes the complaint, regulation 52(2) as amended requires it to direct your provider to submit a response within ten days. If the provider does not respond, regulation 52(4) allows the Bank to determine the matter anyway — the Guidelines describe this as deciding ex parte, meaning the provider's silence does not stall your case.

The Bank must deliver a written determination within sixty days of receiving the complaint, under regulation 53(2) as substituted in 2025. Note that the Bank's own consumer protection web page still displays the older forty-five-day wording from the now-deleted Fourth Schedule; the gazetted amendment is the operative law, and sixty days is the current figure.

Under regulation 54, the Bank may order your provider to:

• compensate and refund you;
• correct erroneous data, information or a statement — which matters if the failure damaged your record, something our guide to checking your credit report covers in more detail;
• cease or desist from the conduct complained of;
• make a formal apology; or
• do, or stop doing, anything else the Bank considers appropriate.

The determination is binding and conclusive. And a provider that fails to implement the Bank's final decision is liable, under regulation 53(5) as added in 2025, to a fine of TSh 1,000,000 for each day the decision goes unimplemented. Separately, regulation 61 lets the Bank impose a penalty of up to TSh 20 million, suspend operations for up to a year, suspend management staff, or publish the names of offenders.

If either side is unhappy with the Bank's determination, regulation 55 as amended allows an application for review within seven days, and the Bank must decide the review within twenty-one days. Beyond that, regulation 56 leaves the door open to judicial review by the Court.

When you sent it to the wrong number

This is the painful one, because it is your error rather than the provider's, and the money is genuinely in someone else's wallet.

Complain anyway, immediately, through the same process. The sooner the complaint is lodged, the better the chance that the funds are still sitting in the recipient's balance rather than spent or cashed out. Providers can and do freeze and recall funds in these cases, but they are far more likely to succeed within hours than within days.

Be realistic about the outcome. Nothing in the Regulations entitles you to a refund of money you deliberately sent to a valid account belonging to someone else — that is a civil matter between you and the person who received it, and the provider's role is to trace and to try. What the Regulations do give you is a right to have the complaint properly registered, investigated impartially, and answered in writing with reasons.

The prevention is duller but far more effective: confirm the registered name that comes back on screen before you approve, send a small test amount first for any large or first-time payment, and save regular recipients so you are not retyping digits. Our guide to sending and receiving money sets out the habits worth building, and if the payment is heading out of the country, receiving money from abroad covers the cross-border side. You can also weigh routes on our money transfer comparison.

If you were defrauded: the rule that changed in 2025

If the money left because someone deceived you, impersonated staff, or misused your account, the starting position under Tanzanian law is now much stronger than most people assume.

Regulation 35 was deleted and replaced by Government Notice No. 298 of 2025. As it now stands, a financial service provider shall:

• be liable for loss incurred by a consumer through fraud, scams, misappropriation or misuse involving the consumer's assets held, administered or controlled by that provider;
• take disciplinary action against employees involved in fraud, scams, misappropriation and misuse, and notify the Bank; and
• promptly refund the consumer for the actual amount lost — "unless proven that the loss occurred due to the consumer's negligence or fraudulent behavior."

Read the last line carefully, because it cuts both ways. The default is a refund, and the burden sits with the provider to prove your negligence, not with you to prove your innocence. But if you handed over your PIN, approved a transaction you were talked into approving, or ignored a warning, that exception is exactly what the provider will reach for.

This sits alongside regulation 45, which requires every provider to maintain a compensation policy expressly covering unauthorised or erroneous debits, excess charges, and financial loss caused by staff negligence or fraudulent activity. Ask to see it — it is your provider's own written commitment, and it is enforceable.

Where the problem is the phone service itself rather than the money — a SIM swapped without your consent, for example — the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority is the regulator for communications services, and that complaint runs in parallel with the money complaint to your provider and the Bank of Tanzania. Report both. If the approach came from someone offering credit, our guide to spotting an unlicensed lender will tell you whether you were dealing with a licensed institution at all.

What good record-keeping buys you

Providers must record and retain complaint information for at least five years under clause 24 of the Guidelines, including the registration number, the nature of the complaint, all correspondence, how it was resolved and any redress offered. They must also report their complaints to the Bank monthly.

That is a long institutional memory, and it works in your favour if you keep your own. A screenshot of the failed transaction, the SMS with the transaction reference, the complaint reference number, and the date and time you lodged are enough to make a case that a provider cannot quietly lose. Storing money where the institution is licensed and covered matters too — deposit insurance explains what protection sits behind a licensed bank, and how to save and invest covers where balances belong once they are safely landed.

Frequently asked questions

How long does my provider have to fix a failed mobile money transfer? Twelve hours from when you lodge the complaint, under the First Schedule to the Financial Consumer Protection Regulations as substituted in May 2025. If the provider cannot meet that, it must tell you and the Bank of Tanzania before the twelve hours expire, and then resolve within a further period not exceeding half the original — so eighteen hours in total.

Can I be charged for making a complaint? No. Clause 12 of the 2025 Guidelines prohibits any cost, fee or penalty for accepting, handling or resolving a complaint, and requires telephone complaint channels to be toll-free.

My bank says I must complain to the receiving institution. Is that right? No. Regulation 58 places responsibility solely on the provider who initiated the product or service — the one you sent from. Your provider must escalate to the other institution itself, on the timetable set out in clause 23 of the Guidelines.

How long do I have to take the complaint to the Bank of Tanzania? Fourteen days. If your provider missed its deadline, the fourteen days run from when that deadline lapsed. If your provider answered and you are dissatisfied, they run from the date you received notification of the resolution. Late complaints may be entertained on good cause, and the Bank publishes an outer limit of two years from when the cause of action arose, but neither is something to rely on.

How long will the Bank of Tanzania take? Sixty days from receipt of the complaint for a written determination, under regulation 53(2) as amended in 2025. Your provider is directed to respond to the Bank within ten days, and if it stays silent the Bank may determine the matter anyway.

What happens if my provider ignores the Bank's decision? It becomes liable to a fine of TSh 1,000,000 for every day the decision is not implemented, under regulation 53(5). The Bank may separately impose a penalty of up to TSh 20 million, suspend the provider's operations for up to a year, or publish its name.

If I was scammed, does my provider have to refund me? As a default, yes. Regulation 35 as replaced in 2025 requires providers to promptly refund the actual amount lost to fraud, scams, misappropriation or misuse involving assets they hold — unless it is proven that the loss was caused by your own negligence or fraudulent behaviour. The burden of proving that exception sits with the provider.

Reviewed 31 August 2026. Figures are taken from the Bank of Tanzania (Financial Consumer Protection) Regulations, 2019 (GN No. 884 of 2019) as amended by GN No. 298 of 2025, and from the Bank of Tanzania Guidelines for Handling Financial Consumer Complaints, 2025. Regulations and schedules are amended from time to time — confirm the current position with the Bank of Tanzania or your provider before acting on a deadline.

This article is general information, not financial advice. It does not take account of your personal circumstances, and it is not legal advice about any particular dispute.