BPI deactivates electronic channels as some clients report wrong balance

June 8, 2017

Bank of the Philippine Islands said it deactivated its electronic channels on Thursday, as some clients' accounts reflected incorrect balances. “In the process of rectifying balances accounts with mis-posted transactions, we have noted that certain accounts still reflect incorrect balances. To allow us to do necessary adjustments, we will need to de-activate our electronic channels today”, BPI said in a statement on its website. Electronic channels refer to mobile applications and online banking, BPI said. BPI extended its banking operation until 7:30 on Thursday for the second straight following a glitch in its operations on Wednesday. “Banking systems such as credit cards, remittance, SWIFT, equities brokerage (BPI Trade), investments and loans remain operational”, the bank said. BPI reported a system glitch Wednesday morning which caused double debit or credit on transactions made in between April 27 to May 2 on some of its clients’ accounts. BPI senior vice president for strategic marketing and decision support Catherine Santamaria denied hacking and scam as the root causes of the glitch. “Every day we do batch processing and somewhere in that process this morning or midnight there was an error, someone must have touched something”, she said. Santamaria said BPI is finding ways to make sure the incident will not happen again. BPI apologized to the public for the inconvenience and assured its clients that this issue will be solved satisfactorily. Alanna Ambi/DMS