Published 30th Sep, 2024

By Abimbola Abatta

I just received my money and was pleasantly surprised. I cannot thank you and your organisation enough, for both extreme generosity and swiftness of action.

The above were the words of Tawa Iyanu (real name withheld), a SmartCash Payment Service Bank (PSB) customer based in Oyo State, to FIJ on Monday morning.

As reported by FIJ on Saturday afternoon, Iyanu had previously been unable to access her N99,846 due to an issue she had unsuccessfully tried to resolve for months.

The bank debited the entire money from her SmartCash wallet on September 19 and also deactivated her account to resolve the upgrade issues that had prevented her from accessing her funds.

Before this was done in early September, SmartCash PSB had told Iyanu that a new account would be created for her and her money would be returned.

However, none of these promises was fulfilled: she could not create a new account, as she kept getting an error notification. Since she could not create a new account, there was no way she could recover the money that was debited.

She made several calls and sent emails to the digital bank for resolution but help seemed far away as they kept telling her they would work on it.

FIJ contacted SmartCash PSB via phone calls on Thursday and relayed how Iyanu had encountered nothing but frustration at the point of registering a new account as well as how this affected her desire to recover her money.

A customer care agent had asked that Iyanu send an email, which she did that Thursday. FIJ also sent an email that same day to follow up on the phone conversation with the agent.

By the time SmartCash PSB responded on Friday to both emails sent by FIJ and Iyanu, the bank said the complaint had been escalated to the appropriate unit for a review.

FIJ published a report on the incident on Saturday afternoon. Later that evening, Iyanu received three separate calls from SmartCash PSB, with efforts in place to address the issue she had been facing.

A SmartCash customer agent also chatted with her and assured her that the issue would be resolved and her money would be refunded.

Iyanu had a new account by Sunday afternoon, and her account was credited with the N99,846 on Monday morning, two days after FIJ’s story.

“They called me this [Monday] morning that they have refunded me. I did a transfer of N50,000 from the money, but [could not move the remaining because] I entered the [transfer] limit. I will do the remaining on Tuesday,” she told FIJ while expressing her gratitude.

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