I had never been a victim before until now.
I had usually used my ATM card on various machines as well as POS terminals.
I had been disappointed many times at payment counters by empty ATM’s. Sometimes I have been left stranded but that is about it. I never imagined how other people saw the cashless experience.
The issues with the system were plenty but it was a necessary system so we didn't continue to operate a cash-based system.
I always thought the pro’s outweighed the cons. I guess until you are a victim of something and you suffer what others suffer, you really cannot be out rightly objective on that thing.

So In a week, I had over one hundred thousand naira on hold by one of the first generation bank. My crime was that I made use of a POS to make payments at various stores. The transactions were declined but debits were registered on my account. “Contact your bank”, the sales person at one of the stores quickly told me. By the way there was this big sign of “Contact your bank for POS Refund” at the store. They warned they would not attend to customer POS refund issues directly. She still expected me to make fresh payments sha for the goods I was trying to purchase. What if that was my “last card” as we say. What if I had no cash left? Should I starve while I wait for my money to be refunded?
I left the store able to still make payments using funds still left in my account while awaiting my refund. I called my bank and was told to log all my various dispense errors after 24hours without reversal. I hurriedly did this, happy that my money will be refunded as soon as my request was raised.
I got the shocker of my life, when I was told it would take between 10 to 15 days for my refund to register.
“Who does that”, I wondered. How was I supposed to survive if I had no other money on me? Imagine what people are going through everyday. Then I remembered, I once met a lady in front of a Bank crying. Her story was that she had used an ATM at a bank beside the one I was at and had gotten the famous “Unable to dispense cash error”. Then she proceeded to the one I was at to collect just 15,000 naira and found out she had no more money on her card. Some people felt she was trying to scam them with her story but I remember a fellow student meeting her there and consoling her. They were attending the same school and she was trying to get out the money to pay for her fees and upkeep. What if she didn't have 15 days to wait to make payments or eat?
Who comes up with this ridiculous Service Level Agreements? Anyway, that’s not the cruz of my story. After over a month, I see some moneys refunded and others not so. Then I make a phone call, and then I am told by my bank that I received value for this transaction according to the merchant’s bank so I should go back to the merchant and sort it out.

I go to the merchant who first asks me to read their bogus banner and to go back to my bank. After much coercion and threatening, they then check and confirm they have not even been contacted about my transaction by their bank. So now my money has entered one chance, and I have to depend on the merchant’s integrity and willingness to take this forward. The only person who gets to suffer in this situation is me.

Imagine if this had been my whole life savings, no matter how small, how do you expect me to go back and use the same card for another POS transaction. So who exactly has my money, the merchant, the bank or the merchant’s bank?
Honestly, in a country where there is no customer service, pray you are not a victim of these kind of issues. As far as I am concerned, this is a totally flawed process. Right now, I am making no purchases at that merchant until I get a full refund FROM WHOEVER.
I am no longer making any more POS transactions again in this country. I honestly feel like someone just scammed me of my money. What if this was my life savings....shiooor.
I will use ATM’s only for now because I have no other option to withdraw little cash but I will rather do cash from this point on..abeg.
Imagine how many people have been down this road.....smh.