FNB says sorry

Big four bank First National Bank says SMS messages sent out to customers over the weekend were a mistake.

The bank sent SMSes to some of its account holders telling them that amounts of between R500 and R5 000 had been deposited into their accounts. But excited customers were later disappointed when a second message went out, saying the credit message had been in “error”.

James Fowle, spokesperson for FNB's Core Banking Solutions, says: “The problem was caused by a human error, where one of our employees caused a maintenance file to be sent to FNB's inContact messaging system, when it should not have been, and this caused some erroneous SMS and e-mail messages to be sent.”

He explains that the file, part of routine maintenance, was sent to the inContact, and was then interpreted as credits by the messaging system. Because it was a maintenance file, various people received messages saying they had been credited with differing amounts.

FNB sends out 60 million inContact SMSes a month to alert customers to transactions on their accounts.

The erroneous SMSes caused some customers to be excited when they thought they had received an unexpected windfall, especially as the reference on the messages was to a “magtape credit”.

Other customers were concerned that a system problem or security breach could have been the cause of the message. However, Fowle says there was no security breach or fraud risk.

The money did not actually appear in customers' accounts, and the problem was limited to the incorrect message being sent out - there was no financial impact.

“Nobody's account was actually credited or debited with any transaction in error, and no account balances changed as a result of the erroneous messages - just the messages themselves were the problem,” says Fowle.

“We quickly realised on Saturday morning that an incorrect message had been sent out,” says Fowle. “Once the problem had been identified, we ensured that we apologised to all affected customers as soon as possible. The correction and apology was sent out at 3pm on Saturday afternoon.”