Bank glitch leaves business owner over $300,000 out of pocket

Employers have been left in the lurch after an online banking glitch caused their staff to be paid multiple times.

Steve runs a business with 45 employees who were yesterday paid five times, leaving him more than $300,000 out of pocket.

“When our pay lady, my daughter, went to pay the wages yesterday it came up and said ‘bank offline’,” he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell.

“My daughter got an email from the ANZ bank saying there’s been technical glitches with the bank.

“It showed on the statement that there were six separate transactions to pay our staff, but they’d all been rejected.

“About ten minutes later my daughter rang me and said ‘Dad, I’ve been paid five times!”

Some of Steve’s employees mistook the over-payment for their tax return.

“I’ve got all these people that have got all this extra money in their pay,” he said.

“Some of them unfortunately thought it was their tax return and have spent it!”

The Melbourne business owner has had to request his employees repay him the money they were mistakenly overpaid.

“We sent out an email,” he said.

“It’s embarrassing.”

Initially ANZ denied the issues, but today the bank accepted that there has been a glitch.

“We had a technical issue yesterday that unfortunately led to a small number of payments being duplicated, including some payrolls,” an ANZ spokesperson said.

“The technical issue has been resolved and we are working on recovering the duplicated payments with those affected.”

Another business owner, Damien, also contacted 3AW Mornings to say his employees pays were duplicated four times.

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