Bank of Ireland will pay €3 mln to 43,000 ATM glitch victims

Bank of Ireland is to refund a total of €3 million to 43,000 ATM users after glitch. 

The ATM glitch was caused by a problem with anti-fraud systems saw money incorrectly debited from their accounts.

The bank says it apologized for the error and has informed the country's Financial Regulator.

Bank of Ireland is making the payments after its internal monitoring processes flagged that ATM users who forgot to take their cash from the machine were still having the money taken from their accounts.

When absent-minded customers fail to take cash or their cards at ATMs, the machine waits a short while before pulling the money back in with the debited amount automatically credited again.

As Bank of Ireland reported, for four years, until October 2009, the installation of anti-fraud measures "resulted in the normal system response of automatically prompting a refund to issue not to occur for these particular transactions".

At present, the bank is in the process of refunding €1.3 million to 14,000 of its own customers this week and is working with other banks to help get a further €1.7 million to 29,000 non-customers.