BBVA bank plans to compensate its clients with bonuses of 1% and 2% after the failure of its system last Sunday that caused ATMs, the mobile application, and card payment systems to stop working.
The bank announced that because “the bad Sunday that we put you through,” all purchases made tomorrow, September 19, with BBVA credit or debit cards will give a bonus that will be applied automatically to the account.
– Customers who use their debit card will receive a 1% discount on all purchases of the day using a physical credit card, or receive a 2% discount on all purchases of the day using a digital credit card.
-Customer who use their credit card will accumulate double points on all purchases of the day using the physical credit card or triple points on all purchases of the day using a digital credit card.
The bank said that there is no action needed to get the bonus. It will be applied automatically. The bank will not contact customers by any means to request information, so customers should ignore any scam artists trying to get confidential information.
On September 13, almost 24 million BBVA Mexico customers could not withdraw cash at the more than 13,000 ATMs or use their credit and debit cards, not use the digital application. The downtime was more than 20 hours.
On Monday, BBVA Mexico stated that the problems in the bank’s operation were caused by an “internal error” when updating the systems.
The updates began between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Sunday, but were not applied correctly, and caused a collapse in the bank’s operations until 9:00 p.m.
“We wanted to prevent ourselves, because a holiday and the biggest celebration season of the year is approaching, where there are a large number of transactions,” argued Jorge Terrazas, director of Communication and Corporate Identity at BBVA.
The National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) has already asked the bank to provide a report on the general failure that it had last Sunday.
Although the process is still in its initial stages, sources close to the investigation said that it could receive a sanction of up to 12 million pesos because it does not have a proxy server, and was unable to restore its service in less than 60 minutes, as required by law.