(Australia) – Australia’s biggest credit card issuer, ANZ Banking Group, has confirmed it has lost millions of dollars as a result of processing errors in its credit card business.ANZ’s managing director of consumer finance, Brian Hartzer, told a seminar that ANZ had been overpaying A$26 million a year on credit card interchange fees to other banks.
Hartzer would not comment publicly, but an ANZ spokesman later said the error – which had gone unnoticed for two years – had resulted in around A$10 million being lost.
The error occurred with the ANZ moved retailers and other merchant clients to a new electronic system, and neglected to reduce the processing payments to that system’s lower rate. The bank continued to pay more than it needed to other banks.
The credit card errors come as the ANZ was forced to apologise to customers after a computer glitch delayed transactions worth tens of millions of dollars, and affected more than 70,000 customers.