By Rihana Adam
Accra, Jan. 15, GNA – Some customers of the First National Bank (FNB), on Tuesday, massed up at the bank’s head office in Accra to lodge complaints about foreign exchange adjustments and the effect on their account balances.
This follows an exercise carried out by the bank to resolve and reconcile debit card transactions carried out in December 2022 and early January 2023, which required some exchange rate adjustments on customers’ balances.
The adjustments led to debits for transactions done on Binance – a 2017 established cryptocurrency exchange platform, with an estimated USD 20 billion in revenue that was ordered by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority to stop all regulated activity in June 2021.
Speaking for the group of affected customers, Mr John Inkoom, said they were disappointed over the situation, which is making customers lose their investments.
He said: “We bought commodities and to us whatever we bought was in Ghana cedis but on December 29, 2022. We got notification that our accounts have been frozen and days later we saw that our accounts have been debited with huge amount and we had negative balances on our accounts, and we realised that the bank has started charging interest on that money.”
He added: “With this adjustment, adjustment which we understand to mean that come about when you use your card to buy something which is in dollars, but we have not done that, so, we were confused and that is why we gathered here this evening (Tuesday).”
Mr Inkoom however, said the Bank authorities, during a meeting on the same evening told the customers that “there is wrong communication somewhere” and have since pledged to resolve the issue in 48 hours.
A release from the bank assured customers that they were collaborating with their international payment partners, to resolve the transactional differentials on affected accounts and encouraged them to visit any of their branches for further assistance.
“We reaffirm our commitment to help all our cherished customers with a better banking experience and assure the general public that we are working with all stakeholders to solve the issues amicably.” The release read.
GNA