The First National Bank (FNB) glitch, resulting in customers' payments from 3 July going off again over the weekend, was due to human error.
This is according to Raj Makanjee, FNB's executive responsible for transactional banking, who says the problem over the weekend was due to an operational error at end-of-day processing. He notes the online systems that had to be suspended on Saturday due to this are up and running again.
"All duplicate transactions have been reversed to affected customers and FNB confirms that any related banking fees that occurred due to this incident will be refunded as normal course of business."
Makanjee says only a small percentage of the bank's client base was affected. "Only those customers who had transactions in the duplicated batch [experienced duplicate transactions on their accounts]."
The bank has previously drawn criticism for system glitches, with suggestions being made that the bank needs to give its IT infrastructure more attention. Makanjee points out that the latest incident was not due to a systems error, but notes the bank continues to invest heavily in its systems.
Timeline of FNB hiccups
March 2012: A power failure at a data centre in Randburg results in system-wide problems affecting ATMs, credit card terminals and online banking.
March 2013: An IT error within FNB's inter-bank real-time clearing payment system, which played out over a few months, is discovered. Because of the glitch, several thousand bank accounts from the major banks are credited twice.
July 2013: The bank's revamped online banking platform gets off to a shaky start as users report login problems and error messages.
April 2014: FNB's social media persona @RBJacobs causes a Twitter storm when responding to a question around the whereabouts of a character from the bank's radio campaign adverts.
July 2014: The bank suspends some of its mobile and online functionality after duplicated transactions are discovered in customer accounts.
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