My wife has been a customer of Access Bank for several years. On the 16th of May, 2020, she checked her account through her app and found out that the sum of N3,333.05 had been removed from her available balance. This means that the money was yet to be deducted but she could not withdraw or do anything with it.

She was shocked because she never authorized any transaction like that. So, I sent an email to Access Bank (ContactCenter@accessbankplc.com) on her behalf. We got an email from one Ekeh Helen that her account has been blocked to prevent unauthorized debits while they work on the complaint. She sent the mail on the 17th of May, 2020.

She also sent us a dispute form to fill and send back. We did just that. To our surprise, the amount was deducted on Monday, 18th of May, 2020. We fired another email. We were told that they were working on our complaint.

We waited for a few days and since we didn’t hear from Access Bank, we sent a reminder and got a shocker. One Mr Gbenga Johnson replied us that the details of her card have been compromised and refund is not guaranteed. As far as we are concerned, “refund is not guaranteed” is the euphemized way of saying “You won’t get any refund”.

Now, here is our defense
1. My wife never received any alert on this transaction. She only found out when she checked her balance through her app. The only detail attached to the fraudulent transaction is :

POS/WEB 4087249160/4087249160

So, the question is, why didn’t Access Bank send any alert on the debit?
2. Anytime she made an online transaction, she received a one-time OTP from Access Bank on her phone. The OTP serves as a form of authorization. She will enter the OTP online to conclude the transaction. So, how was the fraudulent transaction carried out without any OTP or her express authorization?
For the two reasons above, we believe that the fraud was initiated and consummated by someone (or some people) in Access Bank. We have quickly withdrawn the remaining “change” in the account and this means that our relationship with Access Bank has ended here on earth and in Heaven. Nevertheless, we need to let the world know about this.

You may think N3,333.05 is an infinitesimal amount of money, but if this fraud is carried out on 10,000 accounts, Access Bank will be over N30 million richer! Then something struck me – this means that many cases of customers’ accounts being emptied by criminals without their consent may actually have involved internal collusion from the banks. This is a very clear case. If our money is not safe with our banks, where do we keep our money?

Ah
This is pathetic

Call them out on Twitter they will speedily look into it