MANILA, Philippines — Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) apologized to its clients following an internal data processing error.
On Tuesday night, the bank's social media accounts were abuzz with complaints of unauthorized withdrawals from their clients' accounts.
The bank issued an apology on Wednesday morning after some clients observed that their accounts debited twice or credited twice for a past transaction.
— BPI (@TalktoBPI) June 7, 2017
In an interview with ANC, BPI President and CEO Cezar Consing explained that the bank's system picked up the wrong files or transactions when it ran a batch process Tuesday evening.
"It picked up the files or transactions dated April 27 to May 2 and it ran it and so what happened is if you are a client and you transacted with us between April 27 and May 2, you may, and I emphasize may, have a situation where your transaction was recorded twice," Consing said.
Consing stressed that the data processing glitch was an internal issue and not a case of hacking. BPI took its systems down on Wednesday morning to correct the mispostings.
The BPI president assured their clients that the double debits and double credits will be corrected within the day.
"I'd like to emphasize that when we complete this process, we will make sure that no one, I repeat no one, has lost money. I apologize very earnestly and very sincerely to our clients who had been affected by this," Consing said.
Consing also advised their clients who may have more money in their accounts not to spend the money.
"It's obviously money that's not theirs and we will make that correction today too," the BPI president said.
The Ayala-led bank is focused on making sure that the mispostings are corrected but Consing stressed that they are more sensitive to clients who think they might have lost money.
The bank reiterated that the incident was a simple glitch that will be restored at the end of the day.
— BPI (@TalktoBPI) June 7, 2017