The Federal High Court in Lagos has given the go-ahead to OPay to freeze customer bank accounts across thirty banks to recover ₦714 million erroneously credited to customers due to a system glitch that occurred between December 10, 2023, and March 4, 2024.
TOP MEDIA reports that this incident allowed customers to receive value for transactions that were not successfully processed, as detailed in court documents.
The glitch, attributed to a miscommunication between OPay and its transaction facilitator, Interswitch, miscategorised numerous pending transactions (coded ‘RC 09’) as successful.
Consequently, customers were credited without corresponding debits from their accounts.
Upon discovering the error, OPay contacted affected customers who had received sums exceeding ₦500,000, requesting them to fund their accounts to facilitate the reversal of the erroneous credits.
Despite recovering approximately 10% of the total amount through voluntary customer cooperation, many customers did not comply with the request.
In response, OPay filed an affidavit of urgency, leading to the court’s June 28, 2024, order to freeze the non-compliant customer accounts.
This ruling enables OPay to instruct the thirty banks involved to restrict these accounts and recover the outstanding funds.
The Chinese-backed fintech company has refrained from commenting on the matter publicly, but the court filings reveal their proactive steps to rectify the financial discrepancies caused by the glitch.
The fintech has implored its customers to comply to avoid such drastic measures.
