DHAKA — Customers of 33 banks in Bangladesh have been hit by widespread disruptions to ATM, card and digital payment services after a technical problem at payment system operator IT Consultants PLC (ITC), affecting access to cash and electronic transactions during the first week of the month.
The disruption began on Sunday night, when ATM and cash recycling machine (CRM) services, debit and credit card transactions, fund transfers, e-commerce payments and several digital payment services were suspended across the affected banks.
ITC said the services are scheduled to remain unavailable until noon on Oct. 10 as it upgrades and migrates its Q-Cash payment network. The company said it had brought forward the work after its existing software struggled to handle the system load.
The disruption has affected millions of customers, according to banking-sector officials. Salaried workers have faced particular difficulties because many companies pay wages during the first week of the month, while customers using dual-currency cards overseas have also reported problems.
Several bank executives criticised ITC for suspending services without what they considered adequate advance notice, saying the disruption had created confusion among customers and damaged the banks’ reputations.
Bangladesh Bank, the country’s central bank, has begun looking into the incident, its spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan said.
“Banks are required to inform customers two or three days in advance if a service is to be suspended,” Khan said, adding that the central bank had not been informed about the simultaneous suspension of ATM and digital services at so many banks.
ITC Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kazi Saifuddin Munir said the company had informed relevant stakeholders about the system upgrade but acknowledged that customers could have been notified earlier.
The Q-Cash network connects at least 33 banks and covers nearly 6,000 branches, according to ITC. It supports ATM and point-of-sale transactions for participating banks across Bangladesh.
The affected banks include state-owned institutions such as Sonali, Janata, Agrani, Rupali and Bangladesh Krishi Bank, along with numerous private and foreign banks.
The disruption has also affected workers receiving wages through bank accounts. Mosleh Uddin Ahmed, managing director of Shahjalal Islami Bank, said the bank serves at least 100 garment factories and that some workers were unable to withdraw their salaries because of the ATM shutdown.
The bank was forced to send officials carrying cash to some factories so workers could receive their wages manually, he said.
ITC said the upgrade is aimed at modernising the Q-Cash system and integrating newer payment services, including Bangla QR. Munir said transactions could begin returning to normal by Thursday or Friday.
The incident has raised concerns among banking-sector executives about operational resilience and communication protocols within Bangladesh’s increasingly interconnected digital payment infrastructure.
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