I don't know about your country but this feature is novel among Nigeria's financial institutions. What usually happens in a typical bank app is same as above: fields are provided for entering account details. There is no way to know the outcome of the transfer until it's made. If it fails in transit (often, you're debited but the recipient gets nothing), you might get a reversal if you're lucky, after an indefinite period of time. Otherwise, you have to take it up with your bank or the recipient's bank. Or worse, with the central bank, when the first two are not being helpful enough

Enter this new generation fintech (Opay). They offer an addition that impresses all customers: after selecting the bank, a popup appears that notifies you on the stability of the receiver's network. Someone sent me this screenshot seeking my permission or provision of another bank. I didn't think much of it and asked them to proceed. To my surprise, transaction failed and their money instantly reversed

Those traditional banks clearly have no api for health checks, otherwise they'd all adopt it within their own apps. So, how is this possible? My only guess is that Opay maintains their own health checks system that is updated maybe by periodically pinging those banks with nominal fees like N1 and verifying whether money was received

It's obviously primitive but I doubt traditional bank apis return a failure response (since none currently tells you when transaction failed). So you'd have to rely on workarounds emulating manual and automated testing

To those in the fintech sector or with a faint idea of what's going on, can you explain?