With the banking world offering online services for convenience, many found it easier to access their money and pay bills. And although it comes with a plethora of benefits, it is still vulnerable to outages and glitches now and then. Thus, when such inconveniences happen in an online banking system, many feel irritated or, worse, alarmed because of what might happen to their funds and personal information within the application.
On that note, we believe it is safe to say that no bank will be immune to these outage problems - hence what recently happened to the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) users. During the downtime of their system, several account holders reported unauthorized transactions, deductions, and debits from their personal savings accounts. Aside from that, identical transactions and unaccounted-for multiple withdrawals were also echoed to the management. Thankfully, BPI responded positively and insisted that their clients were safe and secure. With that, they are currently scheduling online banking maintenance shutdowns of their application to sort all the duplicate transactions and other issues their clients experienced with the recent unfortunate event.
With everything mentioned, this article will help you understand what to do during these kinds of situations, tackle online banking problems and solutions, and affect online banking outages' effects on day-to-day living.
What to do when an online banking outage happens
Since this article will help you figure out your way through online banking problems and solutions, here are some tips on what to do during a banking outage:
- Do not panic
Even though it's wired in our brains to get freaked out over things like this, we urge you not to panic. Indeed, it is scary not to see your savings balance and details if you have bills to pay pronto. However, if it is any consolation, you should feel at ease knowing that all institutions take these problems seriously and they will restore services as soon as possible. Not only that, but most banks have layers of protection to ensure that your account is safe and secure.
And in line with not panicking, it is also crucial to follow your bank's social media and subscribe to their newsletters to stay up to date regarding unfortunate situations like an outage. They usually inform their clients by posting what has occurred and when the services will be up and running again.
2. Contact customer service
If there is no word echoing through social media about banking outages, it is still best to contact your bank's customer service hotline. Although it might be pretty inconvenient to call since their helplines are usually busy, hearing that your funds are perfectly safe from one of their representatives will help you ease up a lot more. So whether you are having trouble logging in, accessing your account, or encountering glitches on the transactions or amount of funds, do not hesitate to call and confirm if the application is indeed under an online banking maintenance shutdown.
3. Consider over-the-counter cash withdrawals and pay bills directly to their office
If you were about to transfer cash but encountered a problem, hitting your bank's ATM might be the solution. However, if their machines are also affected by the crisis, an over-the-counter transaction might solve this situation. The long queue would still be worth it if you need the money as soon as possible. But if not, you can wait out the maintenance shutdown and transfer money some other time when the online banking application is considered safe for transactions.
On the other hand, if you have bills that are due and your payment is not pushing through, it is recommended that you pay directly to their office. Mainly, it would be best if you never tried to send payments multiple times under an outage, as this can jeopardize your funds. And if you lack cash at the moment, try to bargain with your creditors and tell them about your current situation. This will help them grasp what you are facing and, in return, will give you enough time to pay for your dues.
4. Keep an eye out for fraudulent activities
Monitoring your bank's status and getting updates from your bank is one way of ensuring that you steer clear of fraud. These scammers will try to take advantage of the outage and sometimes call as if they were customer service. Notably, most of them will ask for bank details and personal information. Do not fall for these scams! Moreover, watch out for unauthorized activities on your account. If there are any, inform your bank immediately to resolve the issue.
Effects of online banking outages on day-to-day living
Most of us depend on the reliability and convenience of cashless transactions. With that, here are some of the possible effects of an online banking outage:
- Privacy and security compromise
This is probably the most concerning effect of an outage. Since these applications are reliant on the internet, a data breach is not impossible. With that, all you can do is stay on guard for scam calls and fraudulent emails claiming that they are from your bank institution, looking for your details.
- General lack of convenience
With the primary purpose of cashless transactions being convenient, these inevitable maintenance shutdowns significantly affect its benefit. For instance, with the recent banking outage from BPI, their users will now have to deal with daily shutdowns for the institution to fix their application. Although they are scheduled, it still defeats the purpose of online banking being convenient to its users. What is more, some of the clients will now start to fear unauthorized activities. With that, a few might opt for physical payments for a certain period until everything is perfectly safe.
- Causes widespread panic
Since now is social media madness, almost everything is posted online. People always share their two cents online, from celebrations to rants and everything in between. So when a specific bank encounters an outage, clients will most probably echo it out, attracting panic in those unaware of the situation. And once more people know about the outage, they will all contact customer service, send panic emails directed to the bank, and do other things which may be uncalled for.
Despite online banking systems being reliable and convenient, certain situations are just out of our hold sometimes. With that, we also have to do our part in ensuring safe transactions and fraud-free banking accounts.
