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Johannesburg - Retailing group Shoprite said on Friday it was frustrated about banks' indifference towards the frequent system failures of the national electronic payment system.
Shoprite said the systems failures had caused consumers "endless frustration" and left them disenchanted with retailers.
The retailer said the problem includes all PIN-based electronic transactions, including ATM transactions, which performed erratically this past week.
It resulted in payments for goods being debited against consumers' accounts while vendors received no value, leaving many consumers out of pocket and without their purchases, Shoprite said.
The retailer then attacked bank staff, adding that retailers and consumers' frustration alike was further fuelled by "uninformed bank staff" who reportedly sent shoppers back to stores to have their problems resolved.
Shoprite group deputy MD Carel Goosen said that Shoprite would lobby at Reserve Bank level in an effort to force banks to resolve the problems.
"Bankserv is an automated clearing house owned by the banks and provides interbank electronic transaction switching and settlement services to the South African banking sector.
"When an authorisation request is sent from the vendors to the banks via Bankserv, the bank sends an approval to the vendor and puts an authorisation against a shopper's account, after which the money is withdrawn by the banks from the account and placed in a holding account," Goosen said.
"However, an intermittent malfunction in the system causes the value never to be sent to the vendor. This results in an uncompleted sale and the transaction is therefore declined.
"In the meantime many customers, while still at the checkout, receive a mobile phone text message from their bank that the transaction has been completed, but the information on the cashier's terminal advises that the transaction has been declined," he said.
Goosen said that such an incident occurred on Tuesday at 11:00, when the interbank switch developed processing problems which affected all debit card transactions and some credit card transactions.
"Two hours later, Bankserv was still investigating a solution and retailers continued to experience random declines and timeouts throughout the week," he said.
- I-Net Bridge