On June 12, when SmartCash Payment Service Bank (PSB) first told Tawa Iyanu (real name withheld), an Oyo State resident, that her account would be deactivated for an upgrade issue, the bank hinted that her N99,846 balance was safe.

In its email to Iyanu on that day, SmartCash PSB, a digital bank and subsidiary of Airtel Nigeria, requested her approval for her wallet to be deactivated. It also told her that she would not have access to her wallet during this period, and her wallet balance would be zero.

“This will enable you to re-onboard afresh and afterwards. Your wallet will be created as a new account and your balance will be added,” the bank told her.

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Iyanu was skeptical about that plan, as she felt her money might go missing in the process and she may not be able to recover it. She asked questions so her doubts would be cleared, and she got an email on June 24.

“Please, be informed that your balance will be added after re-onboard afresh. However, we need you to give approval for your wallet to be churned (deactivated) for further assistance,” the June 24 email stated.

Months before this period, Iyanu had been unable to use the SmartCash mobile app and she thought it was having network issues. “I wanted to do a transaction in January and noticed that my account wasn’t opening anymore. I thought it was network issues, but it was still like that till February. That was when I knew something was wrong,” she told FIJ.

She reached out to SmartCash PSB’s customer care unit via phone calls and emails on multiple occasions. The digital banks responded to her emails.

She would later consent to the deactivation as seen in an email she sent on July 18 because the bank assured her that her money would be moved into her wallet once the deactivation issue was resolved.

“They also told me the account would be deactivated and my money would be moved, but they would open a new account and my money would be reversed. I agreed to it as long as it would allow me to access my money back,” Iyanu told FIJ.

However, the deactivation did not happen and her account was inaccessible. On September 18, she went to an Airtel office in Ibadan to complain about the inaccessible balance in her SmartCash wallet.

The next day, September 19, the N99,846 in her wallet was debited. Since that day when her balance was debited, SmartCash PSB has failed to onboard her so she could access her money.

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“I called the person who attended to me at the Airtel office, but she kept saying they were working on it. She even blocked me because I could no longer reach her. When I borrowed someone’s phone to call her on Tuesday, she still said they were working on it,” Iyanu explained.

“These people are wicked. They want to cheat me because I have no one.”

When contacted via a phone call on Thursday, a customer service agent identified as Ayomide told FIJ, “Inform her (the customer) that she needs to open another account with Smartcash, and she will be onboarded. After then, she can give us a call. We will work on it”.

FIJ promptly relayed this message to Iyanu, who revealed that she had been trying to open a new account without success. Each time she entered her details, a notification would pop up: “Max Retry Attempt Exhausted”.

Following Iyanu’s revelation, FIJ contacted the bank for the second time on Thursday via a phone call. And this time, it was a conference call which included Iyanu, FIJ’s reporter and a customer service agent identified as Omolade.

Omolade told FIJ that Iyanu’s National Identity Number (NIN) or Bank Verification Number (BVN) details might have differed from the information used to register her Airtel SIM card, which she used to open the account.

“If the information from the NIN or BVN linked to the account does not tally with what was used to register the account, it may not approve her attempts to get onboard. I can see from my end that she has lodged multiple complaints with us, but the feedback is that she entered the wrong details on the account several times,” the agent said.

Omolade then asked Iyanu to visit any Airtel office to have her profile details updated. But Iyanu insisted that the details were accurate, considering that she used the same information in registering the account that was deactivated.

The agent subsequently advised her to send an email to the customer care unit with her NIN details, which she did on Thursday. FIJ also sent an email to the bank to follow up on the issue.

While responding to the email on Friday, SmartCash Payment Service Bank wrote: “Kindly be informed that your complaint has been escalated to the appropriate unit for a review and feedback to be shared as soon as possible.”

FIJ is aware that Iyanu got a similar response from the bank on Friday.