What do you do when you make a payment online using your ATM card and you get debited by your bank but the merchant says the transaction was unsuccessful?
There is a procedure for card transactions that differs from that of direct payments.
With card payments, there are three parties involved; the cardholder (you), the merchant (that's us EbulkSMS) and the card processor (that's Interswitch or Paystack).
All payments made through card transactions do NOT go to the merchants directly but are held by the card processing company until the next working day.
Whenever you make a payment and you are debited, we only receive credit for that payment the next working day in a single settlement that contains all the card payments made for the day. We then check our transaction logs for all successful transactions and calculate the total at the end of the day. When we receive the settlement from the Card processor we cross-check this with our own total to confirm.
In the case where your bank account was debited but you still have not been credited with the units value of your payment on our platform, please contact our help desk by sending an email or filling out this feedback form. We will attempt to re-query your transaction in case it was incorrectly declined. If this does not work you would need to proceed to your card issuing bank to make a dispense error complaint.
Once the complaint is made about the debited transaction without corresponding value being provided by the merchant, your complaint will be forwarded to the card processor (Interswitch or Paystack) who will contact the merchant to confirm if value was provided or not.
NOTE that the only request you need to make at the bank is a DISPENSE ERROR REQUEST in which you will be asked to provide details of your card, the transaction reference, amount, and date.
If indeed the merchant has not provided you with the value for your debited payment then you should receive a refund of your payment within two weeks of submitting your request.