Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited on Saturday said that processing of some of its Visa international debit card transactions for the period since February 2020 are still to be done.
It made this closure in an advertisement in Saturday’s Stabroek News after complaints by customers about their accounts showing less money than should have been there. Similar complaints had been raised by bank customers in the past when there had also been delays in the processing of transactions.
Republic said that following the completion of its conversion to its new banking platform in November 2019 it had been resolving the backlog of outstanding issues which arose immediately after the conversion. One such issue was the delay in processing some Visa international debit card transactions (IDC).
It noted that on a monthly basis, customers carry out over 40,000 IDC transactions.
“Regrettably, due to the volumes involved and some of the other challenges encountered post conversion, there were delays in completing the processing of all valid IDC transactions. Approximately 25% of all valid transactions remained unprocessed, resulting in the need for a less automated reconciliation of these transactions”, the Bank said.
It stated that IDC transactions done during the period of November to December, 2019 were processed to customers’ accounts on February 10, 2020. Under advisory, those conducted during January and February, 2020 were processed on May 19, 2020. This date would coincide with the recent complaints by Republic Bank customers.
The Bank said that unprocessed transactions post February 2020 “will be processed shortly, always with notice to custmers”.
The Bank said it wished to assure all customers that evidence of the transactions done is maintained between the Bank and the merchants at which the transactions were conducted.
“Customers are encouraged to check their own activity, which will confirm that these transactions were not previously processed”, the Bank added.
The Bank apologised to customers and assured that the incidence of such delays has been “steadily reducing”.
