Kiwibank, BNZ credit card glitch: Duplicate transactions rack up tens-of-thousands in false bills

A Kiwibank customer has been given a hell of a fright when his credit card racked up a $77,000 debt all on its own. Photo / Supplied

A Kiwibank customer almost had a heart attack just before bed last night when he found his credit card had racked up a $77,000 debt all on its own.

The man is among more than 6000 Kiwibank and BNZ customers affected by a technical glitch that has led their credit cards to keep recording duplicate transactions that are causing their accounts to max out.

Kiwibank and BNZ have confirmed their customers have been impacted by a technical issue overnight caused by an external credit card service provider.

BNZ said the issue has now been resolved.

The man said the issue started when his wife last night paid $349 on an online card purchase with department store Ballantynes around 10pm.

Then just before midnight, the man checked his account and saw his account was thousands of dollars in the red, well above the card’s $30,000 limit.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness’,” he said, turning to his partner.

“The first thing I thought is, ‘What the hell has she done?’,” he joked.

“The second thing was, ‘Oh, we’ve been hacked or there’s some malicious stuff going on’.”

The man kept closing and opening the Kiwibank app to check on what was going on and reassure his disbelieving eyes.

“And every time I’d do it, there’d be another two or three ($349 duplicate transactions) that had gone on,” he said.

“It just keeps going up and up and up.”'

Ringing Kiwibank just after midnight, they blocked the card with the account sitting at minus $76,865.

Kiwibank didn’t immediately know what the problem was, the man said.

A Kiwibank spokeswoman has since said about 500 customers may have experienced issues using their credit cards this morning due to a vendor technical issue.

“We’re working with our vendor as a priority and expect to have this resolved as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

A BNZ spokeswoman apologised, saying the bank is supporting about 6000 affected customers.

She said the technical issue came from an external company.

“The third-party provider advised us that between 10pm and 10.30pm last night they experienced a technical issue, which resulted in a number of credit card transactions being duplicated multiple times,” she said.

“We understand customers across a number of banks within New Zealand were impacted.”

“We have had confirmation the issue has now been resolved and all duplicate transactions have been removed.”

Other media outlets have also reported bank customers suffering the same problem, with duplicated transactions creating thousands of dollars of bills after they paid for dinner or made small purchases at Kmart, for instance.

The man who noticed his $77,000 bill last night said that - apart from being alarming at the time - the glitch is also inconvenient as his family use their card to make all their purchases so they can get Airpoints.

He also joked that he thought it may have been an early case of artificial intelligence running wild.

“It just amazes me that this many transactions could go on and continue to go on until we block the card,” he said.