PETALING JAYA: Hefty penalties must be imposed on banks whose epayment services fail due to downtime or outages without prior warning to consumers, says Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong.
With the widespread use of QR, ewallets, and other forms of epayments nowadays, he said that it was unacceptable for any bank’s payment system to fail or experience any unannounced downtime.
“Literally tens of millions of Malaysians are affected when such downtime or glitches occur without prior warnings,” he said on Facebook on Sunday (April 7).
The Ayer Hitam MP was responding to social media posts on Friday (April 5) evening lambasting a Maybank online payment glitch in Shah Alam’s iCity that stranded many patrons who could not make their parking payments to exit the mall’s parking lot.
Online media also reported disruptions in the bank’s services, including its MAE ewallet, had prevented customers from accessing online banking or making withdrawals from ATMs.
“Imagine the frustration, anger, and embarrassment when a bank customer is unable to make a payment to exit the parking lot or cannot pay for meals at a restaurant. Even bank employees and authorities who deal with e-payments would not wish such inconveniences on their own families,” Dr Wee added.
He urged the Finance Ministry and Bank Negara Malaysia to impose hefty penalties on banks to act as a deterrent against any unannounced downtime and to ensure banks offer better services.
“For planned downtimes that must be done for maintenance purposes, these must also be regulated and carefully managed to reduce the pain points for public users,” he said.
