Sunday shoppers who attempted to use their Kiwibank ATM cards were likely to have had no access to their money.
Scheduled maintenance by the bank on Sunday morning caused a problem that affected ATM and EFTPOS transactions between 6am and 12.30pm.
Transactions were declined but the customers’ accounts were debited for the amounts sought.
Kiwibank communications manager Bruce Thompson says the bank is working urgently to reverse the errors, including any fees that may have been incorrectly charged. The bank has subsequently made temporary overdrafts available to cover the amounts incorrectly debited.
Thompson could not say how many customers were affected.
A customer who contacted Computerworld NZ – he asked not to be named – says the bank should have made an announcement about the problem. “A lot of people do their shopping on a Sunday. When I lost my money, I couldn’t get through to the help desk to get an answer. It wasn’t till Monday that they acknowledged the glitch and they told me I should fill in an ATM incident form. It would then take 10 to 12 days to get my money back.
“We’re now identifying every customer who was affected and putting it right,” Thompson says.
It’s been widely publicised that Kiwibank will announce this week that it will purchase a new core banking system from SAP. However, Thompson says there will be no announcement till April 24 when the half-yearly financial results are released.
The new SAP system, if confirmed, will replace the original system Kiwibank chose, from a building society in Australia. Computerworld NZ was told that the system went live at a cost of just $19 million after originally being budgeted at $27 million.
An SAP replacement is likely to cost well more than $100 million.