Open the transfer in your app and copy the reference number. That is what her bank or wallet can search for, and without it nobody on either side can trace anything.
Now the thing that matters most. On your app, “complete” almost never means “arrived”. It means the money has left your app and reached the receiving bank’s system. There is a second step you cannot see: her bank has to accept the payment and post it to her account, and your app has no view of that. The two screens are not disagreeing. Your app is telling you about the sending side. Her screen is telling her about the receiving side.
Three checks before you do anything else
Ask her to search her statement for the name of the transfer service, not for your name. Her account will show a transaction from the provider, or from the bank the provider uses to move the money, not from you. If she has been searching for your name, the money may already be in her account and she is scrolling straight past it.
Check the day and the hour you sent it. If you sent after the working day ended and it was a Friday, the receiving bank probably only starts processing on Monday. Add any public holiday on her side and Monday becomes Tuesday. A Friday-evening transfer from London to Lagos, Manila or Karachi can easily land on Tuesday, and nothing has gone wrong.
Check the recipient’s name on the transfer, letter for letter, against her bank details. Middle names, initials, the exact spelling of a surname. If they do not match, most receiving banks quietly reject the payment and send it back to your app. Your app keeps showing “complete” while the money is on its way back, which can take several working days. If the name is wrong, do not wait: contact your app’s support now and ask to cancel or reissue.
If your recipient is on a mobile wallet, ask her to check the wallet app itself before either of you assumes nothing came. Confirmation texts can arrive hours after the money has already landed.
When to stop waiting
An instant local transfer to another account in the same country should land in minutes; if it has been more than a couple of hours, something is wrong.
A normal international bank transfer that has crossed a working day plus a weekend can take up to one further working day after “complete” and still be normal. Past that, it is not.
Anything more than two working days after “complete” is a problem that support has to look at. Do not accept another 24 hours of waiting on top of that.
Which side to write to
If your app already says “complete”, the money is in the receiving bank’s or wallet’s hands, not your app’s. Most of the time the ticket belongs on her side.
Ask her to write to her bank or her wallet’s support with the reference number. If she banks somewhere with a branch and staff, walking in with the reference number is faster than any phone queue: a person at a counter can trace an incoming payment on the same day.
Only write to your own app’s support if the sending side went wrong. The name is misspelled, the account number is wrong, or the app is showing an error you did not expect. Otherwise she is closer to the money than you are.
If a working day on her side has passed and nothing has landed, come back to your app’s support with the reference number and a note from her bank that nothing has arrived. That is the fastest way to get the money moving again.
For the neighbouring cases – a name flag, a wrong account, a refund that never lands – see transfer help.
Corrections
- 2026-07-30: An earlier version of this page told a reader whose recipient is on a mobile wallet in Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda to dial
*334#. That code is Safaricom Kenya M-Pesa only. Vodacom Tanzania M-Pesa is*150*00#, Uganda’s mobile wallets are MTN MoMo on*165#and Airtel Money on*185#, and there is no M-Pesa in Uganda. The sentence has been rewritten to ask the recipient to check the wallet app itself, which works on every wallet.