NIGERIANS have taken to social media to express their worries over First Bank of Nigeria Limited’s plans to transition to a cloud-based application, which the bank said would cause minimal service disruption.
Many customers have expressed dismay, saying the expressions were mostly based on their fear of expected service disruption during the period.
The oldest Nigeria bank and a subsidiary of FBN Holdings Plc had scheduled 10 days for the transition.
“The cut-over period will be from Saturday, October 26, 2024, to Sunday, November 3, 2024, while the new cloud-based solution will be live on Monday, November 4, 2024, and normal activities will resume.
“During the cut-over period, certain activities and transactions will need to be suspended to aid housecleaning and safe migration of transactions with minimal disruption,” the bank said in an earlier statement on Thursday, October 24
“Please be informed that no system upgrade is currently underway, and all our customer applications are fully operational.
“We are not experiencing disruption to our services, and our banking system, customer transactions, channels, etc, will not be affected by the enhanced supplier platform,” the bank said.
However, the post conveying the clarification had gathered nearly 1,000 comments as of the time of filing this report.
A Facebook user, Marvellous Joseph, commented, “First bank, would there be any system upgrade this week? Yes or no? Or this is coming because customers are already transferring their funds?”
Iyawumi Ben-Ayandele, said, “Thanks for the update. I already moved my money. I’ll return it after a week. No wahala.”
Victor Udom said, “I hope this circular is not face-saving. Because the last time I checked First Bank is yet to fully migrate to the cloud infrastructure.”
Daniel Godfrey added his voice, “Even now, the app is currently not working, and I’m wondering if this was misleading or actually the Truth. As it’s not even 26th yet and we still can’t transact.”
Nigerians’ apprehension came following the system breakdown suffered by Zenith Bank and Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) in recent times during a banking system upgrade.
The migration resulted in service disruption as customers experienced frustration transacting across all the banks’ delivering services for a couple of days more than the days the banks planned to complete the upgrade.
It also led to GTBank shutting all its branches nationwide to customer services.
The ICIR reported that GTBank announced service disruptions for three days, starting on Friday, October 11, to Monday, October 14, to allow for full migration to its new banking application.
However, days after the migration its customers were still struggling to carry out banking transactions across its channels.
It is unclear if the bank has fully resolved all the challenges it encountered during the migration to Finacle Core Banking Application Systems.
Similarly, Zenith Bank’s customers had a harrowing experience of a service outage on October 1, which the bank claimed was due to an information technology upgrade, but the disruption later lasted for many days.
In its statement on Friday, First Bank said it was necessary to clarify what it called a misleading report circulating in the media regarding a system upgrade at the bank.
It said its message was incorrectly interpreted as it was intended only for its vendors.
It explained that the message was focused on transitioning from its current I-Support Platform, an automated platform that connects it to suppliers, to a new Cloud-based Supplier Platform, a world-class platform for managing suppliers, to enable additional capacities and benefits for its vendors.
“Rest assured that our commitment to seamless service delivery remains unwavering as you continue to enjoy uninterrupted access to our services,” First Bank maintained.