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National Bank customers in shock as ATMs, Visa cards stop working


Customers of the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) were on Monday left stranded after the lender’s Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) failed to dispense cash.

The bank’s ATMs stopped working yesterday morning, leaving customers disappointed.

Account holders who attempted to withdraw money from the Visa network, which allows customers access to cash at any Visa-branded ATM, were also left disappointed.

The customers got “access denied” messages when they attempted to use Visa while some National Bank ATMs displayed the message that “this ATM is under maintenance.”

NBK chief executive Wilfred Musau said the mid-tier lender was experiencing a “technical challenge”related to the rains.

BAD WEATHER

The challenge is because of poor “network links due to bad weather,” said Mr Musau.

And in a notice of service interruption issued to customers, NBK said it was rectifying the anomaly. “Thank you for your patience as we work to fix the intermittent system disruptions that we are experiencing,” said NBK.

“We apologise for any inconvenience that the interruption may have caused,” it added.

A three-day ICT system outage left thousands of National Bank customers unable to access key services from the mid-tier lender last September, including deposit and withdrawal of cash over the counter.

The bank at the time re-directed its customers to ATMs and linked the service outage to an upgrade of NBK’s banking platform.

The bank had at the time switched over to the latest version of BankFusion Universal Banking (BFUB), a core banking software by London-based tech firm Misys.