It’s 1:30am right now and this is when I’m getting an alert for a debit that occurred since afternoon. Access Bank.
The first day I experienced this I panicked and moved all my money to my brother’s account cos I thought someone was busy swiping my card somewhere! This was Stanbic Bank.
I bought some books on Friday evening, used my card to pay. On Sunday evening was when I received an alert. I panicked that night, I couldn’t sleep. Even after removing the money I left 5k in the account because I was expecting whoever was swiping my card to try again. So I patiently waited for hours to receive another 5k debit. Nothing happened. I was like so this guy is content with the 3500? Something then said do a Google search of the merchant name. I did. It was showing me a book store. That’s when it hit me. It was the same amount I had paid for the book. So I was like then maybe it’s a double charge? I checked my balance again and then realized it was actually complete and because I was panicking I moved all the money without really checking if my balance reduced lol. This was my first experience.
I would have blamed it on the sms gateway. Maybe it’s delivering late cos of the queue. But I noticed even the email alerts do not come. Email comes at the same time sms comes.
This has been happening since then. I don’t panic anymore. Back when I was in India I get debit alerts instantly. All the time. My experience here is different. Upto 70% of the time alerts come as late as two days. Why?