Standard Bank clients urged to use app to report suspicious activity, call centre overloaded

Complaints have been pouring in on social media about an alleged security breach experienced by some Standard Bank clients.

The problems they reported included fraudulent transactions and blocked accounts.

Standard Bank told media outlets that there has been no breach of its system, but that call centres have been swamped because the reports coincided with month-end, which is always busy.

On The Afternoon Drive, Chief Risk Officer Thabani Ndwandwe did draw attention to the fact that the specific form of this current spate of attempted fraud necessitated communicating with the Bank's customers.

"In the normal month-end what we tend to get is a few fraud attempts as fraudsters know that customers have got money in their accounts. In THIS case, what we saw is a different type of process - normally we broke fraud cases without customers even knowing, and this morning we saw a fraud type that means when we broke it we communicated with customers."

"Most who were affected would have received an sms in the early hours where we'd have said, confirm specific transactions... you would have to answer yes or no, or call a call centre... and customers generally when they see a transaction they don't know, they try and contact a call centre."

"And, unfortunately as you get more of those volumes coming through, the centre is under too much pressure and unable to respond, and most customers then panic and go to social media."

Thabani Ndwandwe, Chief Risk Officer - Standard Bank SA

In view of the call centre overload, Ndwandwe advises clients to use internet banking or the Standard Bank app where possible to report any incidents.

On the chat area of the app, customers will be directed where to go.

"We commit of course to investigate each case, and where customers have been compromised unfairly through any of the loopholes, we will definitely look into into how we refund them."

"We are working with all of our partners to make sure that we block any future attempts and we are working tirelessly to resolve all customer queries timeously."

Thabani Ndwandwe, Chief Risk Officer - Standard Bank SA