“Charge banks with hefty fines for online service outages,” says Wee

 

MCA leader Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong has urged the authorities to charge banks with hefty fines for online service disruptions.

He emphasised that hefty penalties must be imposed on banks when their payment services fail due to downtime or outages without prior warning to consumers.

“Literally tens of millions of Malaysians are affected when such downtime or glitches occur without prior warnings,” he penned on his Facebook page today.

With the widespread use of QR, wallets, and other forms of e-payments nowadays, he said that it was unacceptable for any bank’s payment system to fail or experience any unannounced downtime.

Wee was responding to social media posts on Friday evening. Maybank’s online system had a glitch that resulted in chaos among users who could not make their payments at stores or get out of parking lots.

Netizens then lambasted Maybank for the online payment glitch, while Shah Alam’s iCity saw many patrons stranded.

“Imagine the frustration, anger, and embarrassment when a bank customer is unable to make a payment to exit the parking lot or cannot pay for meals at a restaurant. Even bank employees and authorities who deal with e-payments would not wish such inconveniences on their own families,” Wee added.

The Ayer Hitam MP also urged the Finance Ministry and Bank Negara Malaysia to impose hefty penalties on banks to act as a deterrent against any unannounced downtime and to ensure banks offer better services.

“For planned downtimes that must be done for maintenance purposes, these must also be regulated and carefully managed to reduce the pain points for public users.” – Focus Malaysia