Welcome to the “advanced” digital banking experience in South Africa.
This morning we ran into one of those situations that perfectly illustrates the irony of modern systems.
Our team needed to load prepaid electricity — nothing complicated, just a normal everyday task to keep things running. At the same time a number of payments to individuals were waiting to be sent out.
Simple enough… or at least it should be.
Except the bank placed a verification security block on the account.
No problem, right? Just log in and approve it.
Well, not quite.
The mobile app requires a selfie verification to approve the transactions.
The selfie verification refuses to work.
So you try logging into online banking instead.
But online banking requires approval from the app.
The card payments? Also require approval from the app.
The app accepts the PIN… but still insists on a selfie verification that simply will not complete.
So now the system works perfectly… except for the one thing it was designed to do — allow you to actually use your bank account.
The only solution?
Drive to the bank branch to reset the biometric verification.
All of this for something as simple as buying prepaid electricity and releasing payments that were already scheduled.
The funny part is that everything was working perfectly just two weeks ago through multiple logins.
This is the strange reality of “advanced systems.”
They can do incredible things… but sometimes fail at the most basic ones.
And when you're running a business, time lost to problems like this is time that could have been spent building, supporting clients, and moving projects forward.
Welcome to the fun of modern banking.
This morning we ran into one of those situations that perfectly illustrates the irony of modern systems.
Our team needed to load prepaid electricity — nothing complicated, just a normal everyday task to keep things running. At the same time a number of payments to individuals were waiting to be sent out.
Simple enough… or at least it should be.
Except the bank placed a verification security block on the account.
No problem, right? Just log in and approve it.
Well, not quite.
The mobile app requires a selfie verification to approve the transactions.
The selfie verification refuses to work.
So you try logging into online banking instead.
But online banking requires approval from the app.
The card payments? Also require approval from the app.
The app accepts the PIN… but still insists on a selfie verification that simply will not complete.
So now the system works perfectly… except for the one thing it was designed to do — allow you to actually use your bank account.
The only solution?
Drive to the bank branch to reset the biometric verification.
All of this for something as simple as buying prepaid electricity and releasing payments that were already scheduled.
The funny part is that everything was working perfectly just two weeks ago through multiple logins.
This is the strange reality of “advanced systems.”
They can do incredible things… but sometimes fail at the most basic ones.
And when you're running a business, time lost to problems like this is time that could have been spent building, supporting clients, and moving projects forward.
Welcome to the fun of modern banking.
Welcome to the “advanced” digital banking experience in South Africa.
This morning we ran into one of those situations that perfectly illustrates the irony of modern systems.
Our team needed to load prepaid electricity — nothing complicated, just a normal everyday task to keep things running. At the same time a number of payments to individuals were waiting to be sent out.
Simple enough… or at least it should be.
Except the bank placed a verification security block on the account.
No problem, right? Just log in and approve it.
Well, not quite.
The mobile app requires a selfie verification to approve the transactions.
The selfie verification refuses to work.
So you try logging into online banking instead.
But online banking requires approval from the app.
The card payments? Also require approval from the app.
The app accepts the PIN… but still insists on a selfie verification that simply will not complete.
So now the system works perfectly… except for the one thing it was designed to do — allow you to actually use your bank account.
The only solution?
Drive to the bank branch to reset the biometric verification.
All of this for something as simple as buying prepaid electricity and releasing payments that were already scheduled.
The funny part is that everything was working perfectly just two weeks ago through multiple logins.
This is the strange reality of “advanced systems.”
They can do incredible things… but sometimes fail at the most basic ones.
And when you're running a business, time lost to problems like this is time that could have been spent building, supporting clients, and moving projects forward.
Welcome to the fun of modern banking.
