CC image courtesy of Sudapedia
Kenya’s Equity Bank has apologised to its over 8.4 million customers after the bank’s ATMs malfunctioned, meaning thousands of Kenyans were unable to access their money.
In a statement, the bank said the outage, which ran for a number of days, was caused by a IT system upgrade which also seeks to enhance their data storage capacity.
“Our team has now resolved all issues that were causing delays and we are pleased to inform you that our services are now back to normal in all our outlets,” said James Mwangi, Equity Bank’s chief executive officer (CEO).
“The experienced delays were not foreseen or expected as we had envisaged seamless backend operations without affecting our customer’s experience.”
The problem, which coincided with the peak end-month usage which normally causes overload, is said to have started two weeks ago when the system slowed down and eventually crashed in most of the bank’s outlets.
Equity Bank has more than 620 ATMs handling 2.8 million transactions a month.
Dissatisfied Kenyans used social media to vent their frustrations:
Soon closing my #equityBank account..why should i queue for 2 hrs to be informed to come tommorrow for my money. This after #ATM nightmare!
— George Ogola (@NyakwarSire) July 5, 2013
The silence by Equity Bank on its ATM woes will subject the share on the NSE to bad market speculation and crash it. #Markets
— SokoAnalyst (@SokoAnalyst) July 10, 2013
On Facebook, Wanjala Lucas posted: “Why complain about #EquityBank when there are so many options? Just quit…”
