UCO Bank has successfully recovered approximately ₹649 crore out of the ₹820 crore that was erroneously credited to customer accounts due to a technical glitch in its Immediate Payment Service (IMPS). The malfunction, which occurred on Wednesday, led to the suspension of IMPS and false credits from external banks. The bank has reclaimed a significant portion of the misallocated funds and is actively working to retrieve the remaining ₹171 crore (INR100 crore = approx. USD12 million).
The issue came to light when the bank filed an FIR and sought a CBI inquiry into the incident. UCO Bank informed all remitting banks and various law enforcement agencies about the problem and promptly blocked implicated accounts. Despite the festive period, which typically sees reduced banking activity, the bank managed to recover around 79% of the total amount involved by Thursday.
The bank's shares experienced a slight decline following the incident, with a drop of 1% to ₹39.4 in Thursday's afternoon trade on the BSE. The exact cause of the glitch remains under investigation, with UCO Bank's MD and CEO Ashani Kumar not ruling out human error or a cyberattack as potential reasons for the disruption.
Customers faced transaction declined errors and double deposits in both sender and recipient accounts due to the fault in IMPS, which is a critical component of the Unified Payments Interface (NASDAQ:TILE) (UPI) system. The bank has yet to provide clarity on when IMPS services, which typically charge transaction fees ranging from ₹5 to ₹15, will resume normal operations.
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