HDFC Transfers Rs 1300 Crore To 100 Customers By ‘Mistake’ In Chennai: Turns Customers Crorepatis For Few Hours!

A few HDFC Bank account holders in the city became extremely rich for a few hours on Sunday after their bank balances went up by lakhs and even crores in some cases.

While initial reports stated that Rs. 13 crore each was deposited to 100 affected accounts attached to the T Nagar branch, totalling to Rs. 1,300 crore, HDFC Bank denied it saying the amount of credit differed from a few thousand rupees to Rs. 13 crore for different accounts.

The bank has stated that the whole situation happened due to a technical glitch. The issue was limited to certain accounts of some HDFC Bank branches in Chennai. The bank has attributed the trouble to the introduction of a new software patch as part of maintenance during the early hours on Sunday.

India’s largest private sector bank is now investigating whether any excess money deposited in the accounts had been withdrawn. 

Additionally, this development is causing a lot of inconvenience to the customers since high value transactions exceeding certain threshold limits have to be reported to the income tax authorities.

How did this issue develop?

It all started on Sunday morning when the bank suspended the accounts that reported an inflated balance, following concerns over the transfer of money.

Customers making online transactions were startled as there was a sudden rise in their balance. V Sanjeevi was one such customer. 

V Sanjeevi, director of Vellore International School in Chennai has an account with HDFC Bank’s Besant Nagar branch. He had 3.1 crore deposited in his account after a transaction via net banking. 

“Minutes after making a transaction at noon on Sunday, I went to check the balance and found the excess amount in my account. I understood that it could be due to technical error,” he said. But, there were no details on the source of credit for the huge transaction. “When I logged in again in another 10 minutes, my account showed an error and I could not make any transaction. But, by the evening all the accounts were clear,” Sanjeevi added.

Sources at HDFC Bank said that the issue had been taken care of by late on Sunday evening and that the accounts were released for transactions. While one account holder reported having 13 crore credited to his account, a few others with retail accounts had excess amounts varying from a few thousands rupees to a few lakh rupees in their accounts.

On a funny note, a couple of Twitter users posted on the social media network expressing their misfortune of not having an account with the bank, which would make them ‘crorepatis’ overnight.