Srinagar: Thousands of J&K Bank customers have been left in the lurch as the bank’s mobile banking application ‘’mPay’’ has been defunct for the past few days. The application is widely used by the bank’s customers across J&K. The J&K Bank acknowledged the issue on Saturday and said that the problem was persisting only on two mobile networks and will be resolved soon.
“Some of our users are facing inconvenience due to the technical glitch with two telecom service providers. The Bank is vigorously following up the issue with the telecom service providers for speedy resolution of the same. Inconvenience is regretted,” the J&K Bank said on its official social media handle on Sunday.
However, two days since then, the problem persists, with customers continuing to raise complaints about the mPay app. Businesses that depend on online transactions have been most affected.
“The last few days have been quite disturbing. Nothing was working, neither online transactions through credit card nor mpay app. This has led to a significant impact on trade, as payments have largely turned to online mode nowadays. It has affected our routine business, too, with customers choosing not to buy in absence of the online payment option,” Yasin Khan, chairman of Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation (KTMF), told Kashmir Reader.
He added that businesses all over J&K have mostly switched to online mode for large as well as small payments, depending upon the preferences of customers. With issues persisting with the online app, the traders have been left helpless.
Khan said that on Monday the payment through online methods including credit and debit cards was working fine to some extent, though he could not say if the mPay app was working.
Customers of J&K Bank said that they had to queue up at ATMs in the absence of any option of online transfer of money.
“I’ve been trying to send some money through JK Bank’s mPay app for the past few days but the app even fails to open. It keeps showing the registering option every time I open it. Even after registering again and again, the transaction fails and a senseless response is displayed. This has been going on for the past five days now,” said Shafiq Ahmad, a user of the app.
Infuriated with the app, several people took to social media where they posted screenshots of failed transactions and login pages of the app displaying an error.
“The mPay app has become totally useless. The app keeps displaying an unknown error. The app is as useless as it was yesterday,” a Facebook user wrote.Several users of the application have also been facing issues with the functioning of the app through a Wifi connection, as the app displays an unusual alert. “Onboarding of application over Wifi mode is restricted. Please use mobile internet data to verify mobile number,” the alert in the app reads.
This reporter tried to reach several officials of the J&K Bank for their comments on the issue, but the attempts were in vain as some important numbers were either switched off or there wasn’t any response from the receiver’s end.

KALEEM GEELANI