A Nigerian court has frozen multiple bank accounts after a Keystone Bank transfer glitch mistakenly credited ₦5.7 billion to various recipients, raising concerns about banking system vulnerabilities.
Justice D.E. Osiagor of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted a motion on February 18, 2025, ordering banks to block transactions on the affected accounts until further hearings. The accounts, spread across Opay, Providus Bank, Sterling Bank, Access Bank, Zenith Bank, TAJ Bank, GTBank, First Bank, Moniepoint, Fidelity Bank, and United Bank for Africa (UBA), collectively hold the disputed funds, according to court documents seen by TechCabal.
The erroneous transfers occurred between February 9 and 11, 2025, but the exact cause of the glitch remains unclear, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Some financial insiders believe it may have been a processing error, while others suspect a coordinated exploitation of system loopholes.
According to a source familiar with the case, banks that received the initial deposits—classified as first-level beneficiaries—may have unknowingly redistributed the money to other financial institutions, creating additional layers of complexity.
This isn’t the first time a Nigerian bank has been caught in a large-scale transfer error. In January, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) secured a court order to recover ₦1.9 billion mistakenly credited to customer accounts following an October 2024 system failure.
Such cases are raising concerns about how well Nigerian banks safeguard interbank settlements, especially as transaction volumes surge. Some analysts warn that outdated infrastructure and weak oversight could be making the system more prone to both errors and fraud exploits.
Still, a banking insider who requested anonymity pushed back on these concerns, calling the incidents “highly unusual” and insisting they represent only a negligible fraction of total transactions.
Keystone Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comments.