Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Bank customers had to face tremendous hardships as the mobile banking, and even the ATM services, have suddenly ceased to function.
And what is still worse is that the bank has not bothered to explain to its customers what is actually wrong with its services.
“At around 3 PM today, I went to a J&K Bank’s ATM booth at Sekidafar Safakadal. But I couldn’t get cash as on both attempts that I made, the machine told me that my transaction had “timed out”. It was very frustrating.
“I desperately needed cash, so I drove to another ATM near Kani Mazar; here too I could not get cash. Thereafter I went to the Jhelum Market in Batamaloo. The Mobile ATM van was there, but its attendant told me that the service was not functional. Some was the case with another ATM booth in the vicinity,” said a bank customer, who was hurling choicest invectives at the bank and those at its helm because he had to drive back to his home in Soura to get the money he needed to buy something in Batamaloo.
According to the news agency KNO, dozens of customers of J&K Bank said that the mobile banking application (MPay & GPay) and other digital services have been defunct for the last two days after the “fresh version of the application was updated”.
“We have never witnessed such a situation in the past as it is for the two consecutive days that I am not able to use mobile banking,” Suhail Ahmad, a businessman from Srinagar said.
He added that the users are not even able to log into it. “We are surprised to see that the authorities concerned don’t even bother to fix the error; or at least uniform us about the problem!” he said.
Another customer from Ganderbal, Aqib Rasool said that they are being forced to spend a lot of time visiting the banks for their work, which otherwise was possible to be done at home. “We want the concerned authorities to fix the errors at the earliest,” he said.
Hundreds of netizens have also expressed their resentment and highlighted their sufferings due to the defunct mobile banking applications.
“J&K Bank puts digital transaction facilities including mpay, net banking on suspension mode to revert back to withdrawals, cheques, pay in slips for transaction now,” a netizen wrote in his Facebook post.
“While heading to the petrol pump today, my Gpay & Mpay decided to act up, I had my ID card on hand to make it through! It’s very unfortunate that J&K Bank doesn’t provide us with the necessary facilities,” a netizen wrote.
“J&K Bank’s non-functional services (both Mpay Delight and JKBank UPI) have failed me for two days, causing repeated embarrassment. Now, while paying my water bill, it disappoints me yet again, two back-to-back embarrassments for J&K Bank. First at the salon when UPI didn’t work, and now when I tried sending money to someone, I failed again because the receiver’s bank is #JKBank. Despite charging unnecessary and frequent fees, their servers are always down,” Gaznafar wrote on X.
Local businessmen and officials and transporters have appealed to the bank authorities to resolve this issue, or else “we will be forced to switch to a different bank”. (With inputs from KNO)
