Payments

The twenty-eighth entry is transferência ordenada pela vítima, and the settled English name for it reads at first like the opposite of what it is: « an authorised push payment ». Both halves repay a minute. « Push » and « pull » divide this whole subject in English. In a push payment the payer sends the money out, which is a transferência; in a pull payment the payee reaches in and takes it, which is o débito direto. Which of the two it was decides who may undo the thing afterwards, so the pair is worth learning as a pair. « Authorised » is the harder word, because it does not say that anybody approved of the fraud, nor that the bank vouched for it. It says only that the instruction came from the customer’s own hand, correctly given and correctly signed off, and that the bank did exactly what it was told to do. The Portuguese puts the same fact in the open, ordenada pela vítima, and leaves no room at all for the misreading.