GCash apologizes for temporary downtime

Financial application GCash—operated by G-Xchange Inc.—on Tuesday morning apologized for the temporary downtime, as it assured users that their funds are safe after some customers experienced unauthorized deductions in their accounts.

In a statement posted on its social media platforms past 10 a.m., GCash said services were restored after users may have had problems accessing their accounts for “the past few hours.”

“We extended our scheduled maintenance to investigate and determined that no hacking occurred. Any deduction from a GCash account will be adjusted before 3 p.m. today,” it said.

“We apologize for the inconvenience. The app is now back up and rest assured that your funds are safe,” the statement read.

It did not disclose the extent of the deductions in terms of the amount and the number of accounts involved.

The unauthorized deductions from GCash accounts were said to have been transferred to accounts under East West Banking Corp. (EWB), which said it is now looking into the matter.

“EWB immediately acted on these reports and initiated its own internal investigation,” it said in a separate statement.

“Rest assured that we are cooperating with authorities and other institutions involved in the said report. We are working towards the immediate resolution of this matter,” it added.

GCash—which currently has over 79 million registered users—has since recommended that clients restart their phones to avoid any issues.

The firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mynt (Globe Fintech Innovations Inc.), which is in turn a partnership between Globe Telecom Inc., the Ayala Corp., and Ant Financial.

Earlier this year, GCash announced the planned rollout of the GCash Card in June, which will give users access to the VISA network with over 100 million shops across 200 countries.

Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu earlier said the company will go public “in time” as he cited public clamor, but noted that there is no timeline set for this so far.

The firm late last year said, however, that it has no plan of an initial public offering (IPO) anytime soon citing the lack of a market amid the “tech winter.”—AOL/VBL, GMA Integrated News