MTN Uganda and Airtel have temporarily suspended their mobile money services after a fraud that saw customers locked out of their telecom and bank accounts was reported by Stanbic Bank.
In a joint statement issued on Monday evening, the telecoms announced the suspension of mobile money services, blaming their decision on unprecedented technical challenges prompting the two to suspend services amongst each other.
The companies admitted that although the incidence happened on 3rd October 2020, it wasn’t until today that they notified their customers of the technical glitch, a third service provider experienced impacting on bank to mobile money transactions, leading to their suspension.
“Stanbic Bank Uganda, MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda inform the public and their customers that on Saturday 3 October 2020, a third-party service provider experienced asystem incident which impacted Bank to Mobile Money transactions. All Bank to Mobile Money/Wallet services have since been temporarily suspended,” the joint statement signed by Anne Juuko, Chief Executive Officer Stanbic Bank, Wim Vanhelleputto- MTN Uganda CEO and VG Somasekhar, Executive Director Airtel Uganda, reads in part.
It adds: “This system incident has had no impact on any balances on both bank and mobile money. Our technical teams are analysing the incidences and will restore services as soon as possible. We apologise to all our customers for any inconveniences that has been caused and reiterate our commitment to delivering seamless banking and mobile money services.”
Although the trio claim the problem occurred on Saturday, some customers noticed fishy transactions on their Stanbic Bank on Friday where the Bank was unknowingly sending unspecified sums of money to different mobile money users through their bank to wallet service.
It is alleged that some unscrupulous people hacked into the Bank’s system and started wiring money into other people’s mobile money and bank accounts.
This prompted the Bank to suspend all online banking transactions as they rush to restore the system.
“Dear customer, transactions for bills payments, Bank to wallet and wallet to Bank cannot be processed at this time. We apologise and are working to restore this service,” reads the message.
According to sources, if a customer attempted to send money from his or her Stanbic Bank account to another person’s mobile money or account number then both the accounts of the sender and money receiver will be automatically blocked.
The move to block the accounts is to allow the Bank to investigate and verify to be sure that the money sent was authorized by the sender and not as a result of system failure from the Bank.
The development comes at the time, Stanbic Bank is subject of Police investigation after businesswoman, Beatrice Odongo, a Director at Macdowel Ltd wrote to Special Investigations Division, Criminal Investigations Directorate, calling for a special investigation into claims that the top Stanbic Bank officials connived and bought off a mortgaged property to themselves even if she had cleared the loan to last balance.
The top bosses in the alleged fraud are; Kenneth Kitungulu-Executive and Head Global Markets-Stanbic, Florence Kaweesa-Global Business Manager-Stanbic Bank, Allan Muhinda-Interest Rates Dealer-Stanbic Bank, Daisy Nitwe-Corporate Treasurer-Sales Dealer-Stanbic Bank, Emmanuel Luteba-Head Products and Analytics –Stanbic, Maureen Kembabazi Katwebaze-Works with Stanbic IBTC Bank, Nigeria and Thaib Lubega-formerly Treasury Manager-Stanbic Bank Uganda.
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