News has emerged that some consumers may have been charged twice for transactions last Wednesday when paying by card. Cardnet, run by Lloyds and First Data became aware of an error with their card terminals which resulted in double dipping for payments, although receipts given to customers at the time would only have been printed once showing a single payment.
The danger is that consumers may have been short of funds in their bank accounts resulting in direct debits or other payments bouncing, although the timing may have minimised this as consumers paid monthly would likely have seen their salaries paid into their bank accounts at the end of last week.
Refunds have been should be processed automatically, but if you see a double payment taken from your account then you can contact your bank for assistance, especially if additional costs were incurred by insufficient funds or unauthorised overdraft fees.
The glitch will also have impacted merchants who may have been over or under paid for transactions towards the end of last week.
“On Friday 1st September, Cardnet became aware of an incident whereby the settlement file for transactions taken Wednesday 29th August by APACS 40 (standalone terminal) merchants was duplicated and the settlement file for transactions taken Thursday 30th August was consequently not submitted. This has resulted in merchants receiving incorrect settlement amounts, based on both the duplicate file and late payment of Thursday’s funds. In some cases, this will have been an overpayment of expected settled funds, in others an underpayment. In addition, and importantly, cardholders (customers) of Cardnet’s impacted merchants may also have been debited twice for transactions made on Wednesday.”
– Cardnet
