On January 22, Adeyemi Abdul, a civil servant with the Lagos State Government, attempted to pay a N21,000 health insurance fee with his Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) card to no avail.

Abdul uses the Lagos State Health Management Scheme, so paying with his debit card was the quickest way to fund his health insurance. He didn’t need to go do physical paperwork or queue inside a bank.

After he was notified that the transaction had failed, Abdul didn’t retry. He told FIJ that he was wary of network glitches and multiple debits. His immediate conclusion at the time was to send the money directly to his health management organisation (HMO) officer and have them pay on his behalf. In his judgement, that was the safest option.

“I notified the HMO account officer of the beneficiary organisation that the transaction failed and that I would try again later. I never tried to initiate the transaction again until the following day. At some point, I thought it would be better if I forwarded the amount to my HMO account officer to pay on my behalf,” he told FIJ.

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However, his exact fear came to pass that evening. GTB had debited Abdul three times for a transaction that failed earlier that day.

“Later in the day, I somehow noticed N63,000 was missing from my account. I tried to verify what was wrong immediately on my mobile bank application. It turned out that I had been debited three times by GTB for the N21,000. I was amazed at how, after a failed transfer notification, I got three debits.”

Abdul was at the GTB nearest to him to complain about the debits, and in the usual customer care fashion, the bank told him to wait for a seven-day investigation period. Meanwhile, Abdul had called his HMO to confirm if they had been credited.

“I called my HMO and they confirmed that their account was credited once,” said Abdul.

“I went back after waiting for seven days without getting my money. The customer service person told me to check again. Thus began the intermittent visits to GTB just for my own money.”

Despite these intermittent visits, the bank has not refunded Abdul for the double withdrawal. Abdul told FIJ that it was not his first time having bank troubles. He recalled similar incidents with GTB and First Bank in 2023.

“It has become a norm and regular practice with these Nigerian banks to fraudulently take people’s money and get away with it, especially GTB. I experienced the same thing with GTB and First Bank last year and ended up losing about N100,000 without any refunds to date,” said Abdul.

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FIJ sent an email to GTB on February 19, requesting an explanation about the refund and a resolution of the issue. On February 20, the bank requested that Abdul contact them himself to get a resolution.

“Dear Sir/Ma, Thank you for contacting Guaranty Trust Bank. We sincerely empathize with you on any inconvenience. Kindly inform the account holder to contact us to enable us to assist further, as we cannot disclose customer information to a third party. Kindly be assured of our commitment to providing you with excellent customer service at all times. Thank you for choosing Guaranty Trust Bank,” the bank stated.

FIJ contacted Abdul and told him to visit his bank again with the new information. But when FIJ spoke with Abdul on February 24, he maintained that the bank had not taken any positive steps towards resolution.

“They haven’t resolved it yet. They were telling me they wanted to file my complaints under a new subject. They said dispense error. But how was it a dispense error when they notified me it was a failed transaction?”