BPI claims it has resolved glitch
The Ayala-owned Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) on Thursday, Jan. 5, said it has resolved the double debit technical glitch without giving any details on the matter, if it was an internal system error or a cyber hacking incident.
BPI President and CEO, Jose Teodoro K. Limcaoco, in what seemed like an emotional appeal to its customers, said “no one is ever perfect” and that BPI “regret(s) the incident and its effect on our customers.”
“When you stumble, you admit and address,” said Limcaoco. He however did not provide how many were affected by the double debit transactions and how they detected it and what occurred on Dec. 30 and 31.
BPI in a statement said they are “humbled” by the incident and their clients’ “unwavering trust.” This was not the first time that the bank experienced a debit error issue.
“This incident only strengthens our resolve to always pursue excellence, uphold the highest banking standards, and repay the trust and confidence our customers place in us,” said Limcaoco.
BPI reiterated what it always say every time it had to resolve technical glitches.
“(We are) committed to review and improve existing systems, processes, and controls to address gaps and pursue enhancements to prevent recurrence” and that BPI “worked to reverse the duplicate transactions and the issue was resolved, as committed, within the day.”
BPI account holders’ automated teller machines, cash accept machines, point-of-sale and e-commerce debit transactions from December 30 to 31, 2022 were posted twice.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said it has instructed BPI to submit regular updates after it issued an advisory on its social media accounts on Wednesday, including timeline on the reversal of its “erroneous transactions”.
The BSP also assured the banking public that “it is closely coordinating with BPI in relation to the double debit transaction incident affecting BPI accountholders.”
“(BPI) already identified the root cause of the operational error and committed to reverse the erroneous transactions and restore mobile and internet banking services the soonest possible,” said the BSP.
Banks deal with threats of cyber-related attacks on their cash machines on a daily basis. Other threats that banks and non-banks had to watch out for every day are data breach and financial losses resulting to compromised cyber security systems.
Reportable major cyber-related crimes are everything that would “seriously jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity or availability of critical information, data or systems of BSP supervised financial institutions,” said the BSP.
These would include “compromised state” which is any of the following: when someone or something has maliciously broken into networks, systems and computers; data breach; hacking; pharming or a form of cyber attack that redirects website traffic to a fake website; spearphishing; and threat actor or a person, an organized group or government that has superior capabilities to cause major damage to institutions.