EQUITY Bank services have been up and down for the last one week following a crash of the operating system in the date base.
The bank has more than eight million customers and holds more than half of all bank accounts in the country. A source familiar with the situation said the database collapsed last week.
As a result, customers have been unable to make withdrawals over the counter or at ATMs or to make deposits.
The bank was however taking deposits so long as a customer is willing to accept a manual receipt. Normally an electronic receipt is issued to customers as a sure guarantee that the deposited money has entered the targeted account.
Thousands of frustrated Equity bank customers took to the social media yesterday blaming the bank for loud silence despise the inconvenience that the system failure has caused them.
"From Tuesday last week i have been stuck...not even visa transactions have been going through," complained one customer on Facebook.
Some customers claimed the bank had debited their accounts with the amount they wanted to withdraw even if the cash was was not dispensed.
According to the source who works in the bank's IT department, the bank's database collapsed on Tuesday last week but recovery efforts have been up ever since. This has seen the system bouncing back at some times but failing at some other times.
The bank's chief executive James Mwangi said the system failure resulted from the bank's move to install a new storage system which is more bigger and faster. This upgrade coincided with the end-month period when banks are normally overwhelmed by the huge number of withdrawals. Equity for instance processes salaries for more than 800, 000 employees from various private companies and public servants.
"The experienced delays were not foreseen or expected as we had envisaged seamless backend operations without affecting our customers experience," he said in a statement. "Our team has now resolved all issues that were causing delays and we are pleased to inform you that our services are now back to normal in all our outlets."
It was not immediately possible to estimate how much the bank has lost in terms of business due to the system failure.
For the first quarter ending 31 March, Equity Bank Group’s profits after tax jumped 22 per cent to KShs.3.21 billion from KShs.2.63 billion posted within the same period in 2012.
The bank's income rose 13 per cent to KShs.10.20 billion from Kshs 9.01 billion, posted during a similar period in 2012.
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