Editorial: Westpac banking glitches a reminder to keep track of spending

Shanese Samson, 24, had to ration her food after a Westpac Bank glitch left her account significantly in overdraft. Photo / Otago Daily Times

EDITORIAL:

It has been a rough start to 2023 for Westpac Bank and some of its customers.

Euphemistically described as “glitches”, transaction problems hit an unstated number of accounts in the first week of the year, sending some customers into unexpected overdrafts.

The technological hiccup meant some transactions made on the busiest shopping days before Christmas weren’t processed correctly and were finally put through a fortnight later. The issue reportedly affected hit MasterCard credit and debit payments made on December 22 and 23.

As a result, some customers checked their balances in late December and carried on spending, believing their accounts could cover the expenditure. When the debits from the days before Christmas were finally processed in the first week of January, some accounts plunged unexpectedly beyond agreed overdrafts. Customers were then left embarrassed as payments or spending were declined for a lack of funds.

Westpac Bank, quite rightly, apologised to customers impacted and reportedly authorised staff to refund account holders up to $800 to help them rebalance their finances.

The woes for Westpac didn’t end there, however, as a payment app provided through the bank dropped out of action all day on Tuesday, stopping card payments. The “Get Paid” app, designed to convey payments for small retailers via mobile phones, experienced an “outage”, apparently unrelated to the “glitches” from transactions on December 22 and 23. Some merchants reported losing customers who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay via cash or online.

Again, the bank apologised, this time to its account holders and, more broadly, to any shoppers who were inconvenienced.

It is to Westpac Bank’s credit that it has owned up to the issues and worked with customers to offset the impacts of these issues, but a wider implication arises from the former incident, particularly.

The humiliation of being caught off-guard without enough funds to cover purchases and payments is no small matter. Incidents such as this can undermine personal confidence and esteem in others. A declined transaction is often an embarrassment for all parties involved.

However, personal finances are, as the term suggests, an area for personal responsibility. It is prudent to be aware of how much is going through bank accounts. Purchases made must show up promptly in account records, and the onus is on banks and account holders to ensure this occurs.

It should be no surprise to anyone that times are tight. The World Bank yesterday warned the global economy will come “perilously close” to a recession this year. If that forecast proves accurate, it would be the third-weakest annual expansion in three decades, behind only the deep recessions that resulted from the 2008 global financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Prices are anticipated to continue rising, especially for items reliant on supply lines impacted by the war in Ukraine and downstream production. Higher mortgage rates are a near certainty for most and a domestic wage-price spiral has embedded itself in the local economy.

It’s never a good time to take your eyes off finances, but right now might be particularly reckless.