Lloyds Bank is apologising to consumers and merchants after a glitch in its Cardnet eftpos terminals charged thousands of customers twice for debit card payments, and under- or overpaid settlement funds in merchant accounts.
The problems started appearing late last week, following a flood of complaints from consumers that they had received duplicate charges for the same transaction.
Cardnet, a joint venture between First Data and Lloyds bank, says it first became aware of the issue on Friday, when settlement files for transactions on Wednesday and Thursday were either duplicated or not submitted.
"This has resulted in merchants receiving incorrect settlement amounts, based on both the duplicate file and late payment of Thursday’s funds," states the vendor. "In some cases, this will have been an overpayment of expected settled funds, in others an underpayment. In addition, and importantly, cardholders (customers) of Cardnet’s impacted merchants may also have been debited twice for transactions made on Wednesday."
Cardnet says the problems affected five percent of terminals at merchant customers who have since had their accounts corrected. Duplicate consumer payments were refunded just yesterday.
In a statement, Cardnet says: "Cardnet sincerely apologises for the issue and the inconvenience caused, we continue to work closely with all parties to resolve this issue swiftly."