Bank Simpanan Nasional account holders may have trouble withdrawing cash at automated teller machines run by other banks, with the savings bank pointing to heavy ATM transaction volumes and asking customers to use BSN machines for the time being.
The problem sits on MEPS, the shared link that lets a card issued by one bank draw cash from another bank’s machine. BSN said withdrawals through that route may be difficult, but it did not name the banks affected, say when the trouble started or give a timeline for a fix, NST reported on 6 November.
Its notice came as Payments Network Malaysia, the national payments operator known as PayNet, said the shared network it runs is working as usual. PayNet, which was formed in August 2017 when MEPS and MyClear merged, had teams check the system and found nothing wrong, according to Harian Metro.
PayNet said it had confirmed there was no problem with the Shared ATM Network it operates, and that customers could still reach banking services and make interbank cash withdrawals through it.
The complaints behind that statement came from social media users who said interbank withdrawals had failed in different ways. Some said a transaction took far longer than usual; others said the machine held the notes back even though the account had already been debited. One user said RM1,200 left the account after several attempts at different machines, and that the deduction appeared only when a mini statement was printed. Another said a machine took more than a minute, and the card was nearly swallowed before the transaction was cancelled.
One customer said a service line told them the trouble involved MEPS transactions and advised using a machine belonging to the same bank that issued the card.
BSN asked customers to bear with it while the load on the network eases. “We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience,” the bank said, and pointed customers to its contact centre on 03-2613 1900 or at [email protected].
The two statements answer different questions. BSN’s notice covers what its own cardholders may meet at another lender’s machine, while PayNet’s covers the health of the network that carries those withdrawals. Neither side said how many customers had been affected, and neither said whether the volume pressure came from a single event, a payday rush or a wider move to cash.
What the bank has said so far is narrower than a full outage notice: no timeline, no list of affected banks and no estimate of the money involved. For cardholders, the instruction stands, use a BSN card at a BSN machine while the bank works through the volume. The contact centre line is the only channel BSN has opened for customers who run into trouble.
