Tech glitches leave bank clients up the creek
Bank clients are going through serious troubles as the country's two major digital means for moving funds, inter-bank cheque transactions and electronic fund transfers (EFT), have been inoperable since April 13.
On an average, clients settle Tk 13,000 crore through inter-bank cheques and EFT, data from the central bank showed.
A large number of clients called up their banks yesterday asking to know when their account would be credited through the clearing of their inter-bank cheques, popularly known as cross cheques, said officials of different banks.
Clients who submitted their inter-bank cheques on April 13 have been in dire straits as Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH), a digital platform operated by the central bank, has been forced to halt operations as two Bangladesh Bank data centres have remained disconnected.
"But, we are unable to inform anything to clients as the situation depends on the central bank as a whole," said a commercial bank official.
The two systems, cheque clearing and EFT, are operated by the BACH, under which the major amount of inter-bank financial transactions are settled every day in contrast to the volume dealt with by other digital financial tools.
Although there were few clients in banks yesterday, many rang up bank branches to manage their money amidst the strict restrictions on movement imposed by the government to keep the coronavirus pandemic at bay, said the officials of banks.
Some clients had also personally visited banks to submit cheques yesterday but those were not for the IT issue.
Severe problems have been created in managing funds due to the restrictions on movement, the officials said.
The central bank sent a letter on April 13 to banks informing that the two financial transaction systems would stay out of operation until further notice.
This has had a huge impact on the country's financial sector as businesses and clients do not carry a large amount of cash, the bankers said.
If the BACH remains inoperable, there are delays in payments and companies' activities also face a roadblock due to the absence of the financial transactions.
Of the two disconnected data centres, one is at Motijheel and the other at Mirpur, said officials of the central bank.
Although the central bank restored the connection between the two centres on the evening of April 13, the operation of the BACH is yet to be restored.
"It is not possible to repair the BACH by today. We hope that the crisis will be resolved within Saturday," said a high official of the central bank.
Two technology-related solution teams -- Microsoft and VMware -- have been working to resolve the issue since Tuesday, he said.
The BACH, the first ever electronic clearing house of Bangladesh established in 2010, has two components – an Automated Cheque Processing System (ACPS) and the EFT.
The platform has never faced such range of crisis, said the central banker.
The inter-bank transactions through the two digital modes are the largest in terms of both number and volume of transactions.
For instance, clients submit around one lakh inter-bank cheques, amounting to around Tk 12,000 crore, per day.
Since inception in 2010, the ACPS is the only state-of-the art cheque clearing facility.
The ACPS uses a cheque imaging and truncation (CIT) technology for electronic presentment and payment of paper-based instruments
Under the EFT system, around 1.5 lakh transactions are settled by clients per day, amounting to some Tk 1,000 crore.
With its inception in February 2011, Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network (BEFTN) was the country's first paperless electronic inter-bank funds transfer system.
The electronic fund transfers occurs by way of using the BEFTN, which is also a major part of the BACH.
It facilitates both credit and debit transactions, as a lead over cheque clearing systems.
The network can handle credit transfers such as payroll, foreign and domestic remittances, social security payments, company dividends, bill payments, corporate payments, government tax payments, social security payments and person-to-person payments.
Most of the government salary, social benefits, all social safety net payments and other government payments are processed through the BEFTN.
Syed Mahbubur Rahman, managing director of Mutual Trust Bank, said a majority of clients had withdrawn cash in the couple of days thinking that banks were due to be kept shut during the restrictions on movement.
So, both banks and clients did not face a severe crisis yesterday, he said.
The central bank has allowed clients to transact any amount of money through the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) platform to offset the crisis to some extent.
Clients are usually allowed to send Tk 1 lakh and above to customers of other bank through the RTGS.
This has helped clients to tackle the transaction's halt through EFT.
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