A bank that executes a wire transfer order for investment purposes acts merely as a payment service provider. As such, it is under no obligation to interfere with the appropriateness of the investment, nor to warn its client of its speculative nature. The bank can only be held liable in the presence of apparent anomalies that are readily detectable by a reasonably diligent professional, and not solely on the basis of the amount, the unusual nature or the foreign destination of the transfers.

Court of Cassation, Commercial, Financial and Economic Chamber, 25 March 2026, No. 25-10.353 and No. 24-18.093

In the first case (case no. 25-10.353), a customer had asked her bank to execute three transfers totalling €90,000 to an account opened in Germany in order to make investments in the crypto-asset market. Claiming to have been the victim of a scam, she accused the bank of a breach of its duty of care and warning. In finding against the bank, the Court of Appeal cited “ the multiple transfers of funds involving large sums and the entirety of the customer’s savings”, the unusual nature of the transactions and the location of the recipient bank in Germany, adding that the institution had not taken“any steps to warn Ms [Z] against risky investments”.

The Court of Cassation has quashed the judgment on this point.

It states that “the bank, which receives a transfer order for the purpose of making an investment, acts as a payment service provider and, since it is required not to interfere in its client’s affairs, it is under no obligation to provide advice or issue warnings regarding the risks of the proposed investment”.

The executing bank is not required to assess the economic soundness of the investment, even where it involves crypto-assets and absorbs the client’s entire savings.

The Advocate General’s Opinion usefully clarifies the scope of this ruling.

He first emphasises that the bank was being sued “solely in its capacity as a payment service provider that executed transfers which, according to the claimant, were marred by apparent anomalies”. The crux of the debate was therefore not the existence of an independent duty to advise, but rather the characterisation of any apparent anomalies in the executed orders.

The opinion is particularly valuable because it situates the judgment within the recent case law of the Commercial Chamber. It refers to the judgment of 1 October 2025 (Cass. Com. 1 October 2025 No. 24-17.306), according to which the banker, “bound by a duty of non-interference in his client’s affairs, must only alert the client in the presence of payment orders presenting apparent anomalies detectable by a normally diligent professional, without interfering in the appropriateness of the financed transactions”. He also cites several judgments of 19 November 2025 (Nos. 24-17.056 and 24-17.780) specifying the existence of “easily detectable apparent anomalies” and the obligation, in such a scenario, to verify their validity with the person authorised to transmit the order.

In the Advocate General’s view, the Court has already refused to recognise an apparent anomaly in situations that were nonetheless atypical: a large transfer made during the summer by an employee who was not the company’s director, a transfer of a large sum to an unusual foreign beneficiary, or a series of nine transfers directed to banks located in a country where the company had no business operations. He therefore ruled that, in the present case, the factors relied upon by the Court of Appeal (three large-sum transfers, corresponding to the entirety of the savings, which were unusual and destined for a German bank) were insufficient to constitute an apparent anomaly.

Although the Court of Cassation ultimately quashed the judgment only in respect of the part concerning the absence of an obligation to provide advice or a warning, a reading of the opinion clearly illustrates the overall logic.

The speculative, risky or unusual nature of the transaction is not sufficient in itself. The bank’s duty of care does not concern the appropriateness of the investment, but the existence of an objectively detectable anomaly in the payment order.

The significance of this decision becomes even clearer when viewed alongside the judgment handed down on the same day (case no. 24-18.093).

In this second decision, a retired female customer had ordered eight transfers over a two-month period, totalling €95,294, to accounts held in Belgium. She explained that she had been deceived by an individual who led her to believe she had to pay sums to release a life insurance policy taken out by her husband. She accused the bank of failing in its duty of care.

The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal. It upheld the Court of Appeal’s finding that the international nature of the transfers, “their sometimes substantial amounts, their number and the short period over which they were made” did not, in themselves, constitute anomalies.

It also noted that one of the transfers included the optional mention of the name [X] [S] as the beneficiary, from which the bank could legitimately infer that this was a member of the client’s family. It concluded that the transactions “did not present any apparent anomalies readily detectable by a diligent professional”.

A comparative analysis of the two decisions is instructive.

In both cases, the Commercial Chamber takes the same line. The atypical nature of the transaction, its economic risk or even its apparent strangeness do not, in themselves, give rise to bank liability.

These decisions thus confirm that a more restrictive interpretation is applied to the concept of apparent anomaly.

They show that the scrutiny exercised over the executing bank remains strictly limited. The bank must verify the validity of the instruction if apparent anomalies, whether formal or substantive, can be detected by a normally diligent professional; but it is not required to investigate the motive for the payment or the financial interest of the transaction for its client. The duty of care must not become a tool for generally calling into question the duty of non-interference.

In practice, the law is clear. A client who is the victim of fraud cannot successfully hold their bank liable for failing to dissuade them from investing, even where the transaction involved crypto-assets or utilised their entire savings. They will have to establish the existence of an apparent anomaly that is objectively detectable in the executed order. As far as banks are concerned, so long as they remain in their role as mere executors and no obvious anomaly affects the order, they are neither guarantors of the economic soundness of the transaction nor obliged to protect the client against a poor investment choice. It is therefore strictly around the issue of apparent anomaly, taken in the strictest sense, that the bulk of litigation will continue to revolve.

By Olivier Vibert

Kbestan, law firm in Paris and Evreux