The company said that it has taken steps to return the funds that have been mistakenly deducted from clients' linked bank accounts. — Screengrab from StashAway website
StashAway Malaysia has acknowledged that some of its clients have been affected by a direct debit issue, where funds from their linked bank accounts were mistakenly deducted multiple times.
The digital wealth management platform said they discovered the issue on Monday (July 27) and contacted affected clients on the same day. The company also said that it has taken steps to refund all the money that had been deducted in error.
"At 3pm yesterday (July 28), we sent out all of the funds back to our clients’ bank accounts and by 11pm the same night, the majority of clients had received the full amount deducted," the company said in a statement to LifestyleTech.
For now, the company is attributing the issue to a technical glitch with its direct debit provider. It said a detailed tech post-mortem will be published later which will explain the root cause of the issue along with measures to prevent any more incidents in the future.
"As of now, what we can share is that the error seems to be related to an anomaly that appeared while transacting with Curlec, our direct debit service provider," the company said.
According to a report by website Vulcan Post, users experienced 26 to 27 direct debit transactions each due to the issue on July 27. The number of multiple transactions was also confirmed by an email from the company to affected users.
The report explained that users can set up an automated monthly deposit transfer of a certain amount to the company’s partner bank for investment purposes.
In one case, an affected user had set up a monthly direct debit amount of RM150 to StashAway.
On StashAway’s Facebook page, one user claimed that he experienced multiple direct debit transactions of up to 52 times while another user alleged that funds from her bank account has been completely "cleared" due to the direct debit issue.
The company said affected users will be issued a voucher which gives them six months of free investing. It however, declined to reveal how many clients were affected by the issue.
StashAway launched locally in 2018 and is licensed by Securities Commission Malaysia, according to information on its website.
