Irish high street bank AIB has admitted to a glitch in its online banking service after it was highlighted by newspaper The Irish Independent.
According to the Independent, the bug was first discovered by a Dublin businessman who, when trying to log in to the online banking site with new user credentials, was given access to the previous account details.
But when the user tried to alert the bank to the error, he was left on hold for over 45 minutes and instead decided to contact the newspaper.
“My fear is that this could be used in small businesses by disgruntled employees to reorder the company accounts in some ways,” the businessman told the newspaper.
“It would be very easy to change payments to set things up differently. Even if that didn’t happen, it’s completely inappropriate for someone to be able to access company accounts when they shouldn’t have the login.”
According to the bank, the glitch was a result of an IT update implemented the previous weekend. The bug “affected a small number of business customers who exited their business banking desktop application without signing out” and has now been fixed with no personal customers affected.
The incident is one further example of glitches and errors in the Irish banking sector. AIB's online banking app has suffered two outages so far this year and also suffered a problem processing payments for its tracker mortage customers.
Meanwhile Bank of Ireland made international headlines when a bug that allowed users without funds to withdraw money caused queues at ATMs around the country in the mistaken pursuit of 'free money'.