By Uzoma Chukwudi
Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) customers have expressed anger over ongoing service breakdowns, a day after the bank transitioned to a new banking application system.
The bank had earlier announced the transition from its current Core Banking Application to a new enhanced version of the Finacle Core Banking Application, on Friday, Oct. 11.
To facilitate this upgrade, all branches nationwide closed early at 12:00 p.m. on Friday and were scheduled to reopen at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 14.
GTBank also informed customers of service disruptions across its digital banking platforms for 11 hours, from 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 13, until 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 14.
Although the bank assured customers that essential services such as transfers, bill payments, and airtime and data purchases would remain available, many customers faced difficulties.
As of the time of filing this report, many Gtbank customers have their money stuck in the account without being able to withdraw from their bank and make any transactions. Also there have been long queues in Gtbank branches across the nation.
Gtbank users are furious at not being able to access their money in this hard time.
An x user @DrGeeONE said: “I saw a patient this evening, she had been stranded since morning and couldn’t access healthcare because her Gtbank account was inaccessible. You should probably just transition into a food and fashion franchise. Banking is a serious business. You play too much!!!”
Another user@_Matriach said: “I’m actually so sad. I need to use money for a lot of things and I can’t even access one naira. So sad. @gtbank this is unfair. It’s Wednesday “
@Onagz_ added: “What is happening to Gtbank is a result of incompetence of software talents in Nigeria. A proper way to do a massive upgrade like this is ungrade separately to a new version and start moving your users in batches to the new version. This process is hard but it won’t affect users.”
