November 16,2022

Jeffrey Aloye Onoapor, a Nigerian in New Zealand, used his Zenith Bank account to make a N30,000 payment on the Police Specialized Services Automation Project (POSSAP) portal on October 20 for the issuance of a police extract and character reference letter for his wife.

Although Zenith Bank generated a receipt for a successful transaction, his payment status on the POSSAP portal kept displaying ‘pending’.

After waiting four days, Onoapor emailed POSSAP to inquire about his payment status and received a mail informing him that his transaction had failed.

He said when he reached out to the manager of the bank’s airport branch in Lagos, whom he simply identified as Mrs. Jennifer, he was told that the failed transaction was from the recipient’s financial institution, Parkway ReadyCash, a mobile payment service, and that they had made efforts to contact them but were yet to receive any feedback.

According to Mrs Jennifer, Parkway ReadyCash could only be contacted through Interswitch, but FIJ made efforts to contact Parkway ReadyCash through their customer support email and received a response within an hour of sending the mail.

The mobile payment service asked FIJ for the invoice number and receipt of the transaction for further assistance.

Onoapor said the police extract and character reference letter were part of the requirements to process the documents to bring his family to reunite with him in New Zealand, and that since communicating with Zenith Bank, all he had met with were delays and excuses.

When FIJ called Mrs Jennifer, she referred us to the bank’s settlement desk. FIJ repeatedly called the settlement desk but received no response