Published 20th Sep, 2024

By Tola Owoyele

Babalola Martins, a Lagos State-based entrepreneur, has detailed how $13.89 was debited from his company’s Access Bank domiciliary account without his consent.

Martins told FIJ that the sum, an equivalent of N22,772, was stolen from the account on July 29.

“I operate a dollar account that was opened in my company’s name with Access Bank,” Martins told FIJ.

“From time to time, I do make use of the account for transactions. In July, the only transaction I carried out on the account’s dollar debit card was for a Canadian Visa fee payment I made. And after making the payment, I was duly debited by Access Bank.

“On July 29, however, I suddenly received a debit alert of $13.89 around 11 pm from Access Bank even though I did not carry out any transaction.

“It was definitely an unauthorised and fraudulent transaction because on that day, I was not sent any OTP or notification concerning the transaction.”

Martins said he subsequently sent several emails to Access Bank to get its officials to reverse the $13.89, but he did not get any response.

“All my attempts at getting Access Bank to reverse my money have failed,” he said.

“I am still trying to understand why Access Bank will debit $13.89 from my account without any justification.”

FIJ sent an email to Access Bank for a reaction to Martins’ complaint on Thursday, but it had not been responded to at press time.

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3 replies on “$13.89 Vanishes From Lagos Entrepreneur’s Access Bank Account”

Banks are not charity homes and as such must charge fees for services rendered.

Most if not all banks in Nigeria are guilty of this unauthorized debits from customers’ accounts and they’re even more guilty of accountability across their so-called Customer Service channels including the messaging options on their mobile banking apps.

If you send an email, which ordinarily goes to the bank Hq, the best you are likely to get is an automated reply which tells you that your complaint has been received and that you would hear bank after several business days.

Our banks like most other corporate services institutions, need to really train their customer service teams on how optimal and efficient customer service response channels can keep customers that would have otherwise taken their businesses elsewhere to other institutions.

Among the institutions I’ve had to deal with, I will personally give a huge thumbs up to Stanbic IBTC Asset Management and Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited for their exceptional and swift customer service systems.

I have never been to any of their offices for a second but since I began doing business with them online from within and outside Nigeria in the last almost 3 years, it’s been an exciting experience, matching what I’ve also exoerienced in North America

Same thing happened to me. $200 dollars was deposited into my access bank account and receipt was send to me which was N266.65 naira, but money was not in my account. I called my bank manager and up until today nothing. Still no money. And in March of this same year, I sent N40.000, twice to my mums account, money was debited from my account and also my mum never received the money. I have refused to run the account and the balance there now is N3 407 left now..I don’t run the account anymore. Very shameful that this is what the access bank has resulted to. Stealing clients monies!