National
Standard Bank says sorry for ATM glitch─── 08:53 Sat, 25 Apr 2015
Cape Town - No one wants to struggle to draw money at an ATM on payday. But that’s exactly what happened on Friday with several Standard Bank clients, reported Netwerk24.
Marelize Ferreira Greyling said on the Facebook page of newspaper Beeld, part of Netwerk24, that once you withdraw money at Standard Bank ATMs, a message displays “updating your account” and then “your account is empty".
She said the branch in Randfontein was packed with clients who experienced the same problem, and said staff told them it was a national problem.
News24 received a similar complaint from an irate user who asked “if it is not a violation or abuse of power from Standard bank to deliberately have customers try and withdraw money from the bank today only to have no money come out and then have ones account deducted”.Yazini April said several of her colleagues were livid after the incident. “In my case R2 000 was deducted.”
Another client, Robert Southey, tweeted: “Atms down. Shows funds withdrawn but no cash. In Norwood Mall branch with angry customers.”
Standard Bank acknowledged that there was a problem in its response to Southey, saying that its technicians were attending to the problem.
A Standard Bank spokesperson said the bank did experience “technical problem” on Friday between 08:00 and 09:30.
He said the problem was limited to debit cards at ATMs and point-of-sale (POS) terminals.
"Clients who have withdrawn money, would have seen that their balance changed, but did not receive the money. This matter, as well as all the affected transactions, has been rectified," he told Netwerk24. Standard Bank, which has been struggling with technical problems lately, have implemented an early warning system after a major systems meltdown on 1 September last year, but failed to warn clients on Friday.
Standard Bank's system crashed on 1 September 2014 after a hardware fault affected ATMs, POS's, branches and online banking. The last warning was on 11 March 2015, where the bank warned of limited banking access, including internet and mobile banking as part of a system upgrade process.
On Friday, Standard Bank apologised to clients for the inconvenience caused.
