Philippine bank suffers 2nd straight day of glitch
Print Edition
A MAJOR Philippine bank shut down online access and its cash machines for a second day yesterday because of a glitch that drained some accounts but added money into others, creating at least one instant “billionaire.”
Bank of the Philippine Islands, the country’s third biggest bank by assets and with 8 million customers, was forced to deactivate electronic transactions just hours after saying the problem had been fixed and online services restored.
Customers were shocked on Wednesday to find unauthorized withdrawals and deposits from their accounts, triggering fears the bank had been hacked and social media erupting with complaints against the 166-year-old lender.
There has been global concern about hacking following the world’s biggest ransomware attack last month that struck hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide.
BPI blamed an “internal data processing error” for the glitch that led to unauthorized credits and debits on customers’ accounts, without explaining the nature of the problem or how it occurred. The central bank said it accepted BPI’s explanation that no hacking was involved but would still carry out its own investigation.
As BPI scrambled to fix the error on Wednesday, it closed its ATMs and suspended online transactions.
The bank early yesterday said it had fixed the problem and that access to all its electronic channels had been restored, only to deactivate it again as complaints about wrong balances continued to pour in. “In the process of rectifying balances of accounts with mis-posted transactions, we have noted that certain accounts still reflect incorrect balances,” the bank said.
While many clients reported money missing from their accounts, one customer was reported to have become an instant peso billionaire.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that Jocelyn Reyes was surprised to find her account surge to more than 12.4 billion pesos (US$250 million) overnight but she and her husband merely laughed off their newfound “fortune.”
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