telebirr and CBE verification are not the same problem
What is the difference between verifying a telebirr and a CBE payment?
telebirr needs one thing: the transaction number, eight to fourteen characters, and the receipt resolves from that alone. CBE needs two: the FT reference and the last eight digits of the account the money moved on, because the bank uses the suffix to pick which receipt it is. That single difference accounts for most failed CBE lookups, because customers send the FT code alone and it can never resolve by itself.
telebirr: one number
A telebirr transaction number is short, self-contained, and resolves on its own. The customer has it in their confirmation SMS and in the SuperApp under Transaction History.
The failure mode is not the format, it is cropping. The number runs to the edge of the green success screen, and a tight screenshot crop cuts the end off it. A truncated number resolves to nothing and looks, to the seller, exactly like a fake. Ask for the number from the SMS rather than reading it off an image.
CBE: a reference and a suffix
A CBE reference on its own is not enough. The bank wants the reference followed by the last eight digits of the account number, and without that suffix the lookup cannot succeed, no matter how genuine the payment.
This is the single most common reason a real CBE payment appears to fail verification. The customer sends the FT code from their SMS, it does not resolve, and the seller concludes the payment is fake. It is not. Ask for the last eight digits of their account as well.
CBE Mobile also shares a short link that already contains both parts, which is the easiest thing to ask for if the customer is willing to forward it.
A CBE reference and an Amhara reference look identical
There is one more trap worth knowing. A CBE reference pasted without its account suffix is twelve characters beginning FT, and that is exactly the shape of an Amhara Bank reference.
Nothing in the code itself says which bank it came from. If a twelve-character FT reference fails, the two possibilities are an Amhara payment that genuinely did not resolve, or a CBE payment missing its suffix. Ask which bank the customer used before concluding anything.
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