Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has ordered Interswitch Plc, a payment processing company back to its Dispute Management Platform Operations, meaning that bank customers, who had been debited for ATM transactions for which they did not get money or services, will now have their complaints addressed.
Immediately President Muhammadu Buhari announced the lockdown of Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states, the CBN issued a directive to interswitch demanding “a temporary suspension of operations on Dispute Management Platform, Arbiter effective 10 PM, April 1,.”
The Nation reported that this action, the CBN said, became necessary “as a result of the impact of the CovID-19 pandemic and the movement restrictions declared by the Federal Government.”
It told Interswitch that “the temporary suspension will last until the removal of ban on movement restriction and commencement of full operations.”
However, “stakeholders” mounted pressure on the CBN to take a second look at the decision.
Last week, the CBN reversed it’s decision.
According to a letter to banks, the Dispute Management Platform Operator (Interswitch) said the CBN had withdrawn the earlier directive “due to feedback from certain industry stakeholders.”
Interswitch, in its letter, stated that “all chargebacks and disputes will be processed according to their regular timelines.”
It urged the banks to “note that all claims that were already logged before the temporary Suspension of the platform were not impacted and as such, the existng timelines for such claims remains unchanged.”
“In addition, chargebacks and disputes that may have arisen during the period of the suspension can now be logged on the platform as appropriate” Interswitch wrote.
By this decision, banks can now resume processing of refunds for failed Visa and Verve card transactions on other bank ATMs and POS terminals with immediate effect.
