Major Philippine bank encounters serious problem

Illustrative photo (Source: EPA/VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), a major bank of the Philippines, had to shut down online transactions and automatic teller machines (ATMs) on June 7 after money went missing from accounts.

Although the bank said it was just an internal computer error, the incident raised fear among customers that the BPI was attacked by hackers.

Customers of the BPI were shocked as they could not withdraw or send money in the morning of June 7. In a statement, the BPI said the problem was caused by an internal data processing error.

The bank had to close all of its ATMs and asked eight million customers not to do any online transactions as it was trying to fix the problem.

The BPI affirmed that efforts to fix the glitch are progressing well and it is expected to be solved in next few days, but the bank has yet to state its cause.

The problem also doubled the value of some transactions from April 27 to May 3, while number of affected customers was unclear.

BPI Vice President Cathy Santamaria also warned customers not to post information from their private bank accounts online and called for honesty of those who had money mistakenly sent to their accounts.

Nestor Espenilla, incoming Governor of the central bank of the Philippines, said even though they accepted explanation of the BPI that no hacking was involved, the central bank would still conduct its own probe.

The incident occurred amid global concern about the attack of WannaCry malware last month, which affected thousands computers worldwide.-VNA