95 Reasons why Standard Chartered Bank's Online Banking Platform UX (and overall service) needs a major revamp!

Someone at Standard Chartered Bank decided that they don't want me to download my last TAX Year's statement from the web. The only way to get a copy is to pay them for it. And even then, it is manually done, and not immediate, and they can't help whatsoever with my emergency unless I visit a branch during working hours.

What kind of a strange belligerent person wakes up one morning and decides to do weird shit like this?

This reminded me of hundreds of UI/UX issues with their platform that I have faced in the last year or so. So I wrote down a little rant in the hope that someone in their team will notice how weird their UX is.

1. Let’s say it’s the 31st of the month and you have already paid your previous Credit Card due and you get your new salary so you just go in to check how much you owe next month on your credit card. Do you know what you will get?
   • A Current Balance that does not match the total amount you spent because transactions made more than 20 hours ago don’t appear yet
     • If they are pending, why don’t you just show that they are pending?
     • Why can’t I even see how much is pending/stuck/blocked?
   • But that’s not it, the Minimum Payment Due amount displayed is from the bill you already paid last month! It’s not the predicted due, or the real due. In reality, my MPD is 0 because I already paid 20 times this amount and cleared off the card! But not according to whoever designed this!
   • Who in their right mind writes DR beside a money field and doesn’t even add a space? What does this even mean? 

1. Want to send someone a little money very quickly?
   • No! You must “remember” if it’s going to be in the bank or outside (who in the holy name of Pinocchio ever memorized what bank their friend uses?) and then you have to go into one of them to look for them. Why couldn't I just search their name and find whatever account they have?

• But haha, that’s not it. You must then go through a non-searchable table to find their account, with their bank names appended weirdly to the string almost as of Little Gnomes coded this, and then you have to press a “Transfer” button beside each row to send to them! What's with this terrible UX? Imagine that I have 500 beneficiaries. How will I search/filter? Why can't I keep a note with each beneficiary to keep track of which account is for what purpose?

1. Who decided that I should not be able to download my last year’s statement other than calling you guys and paying you for it? What purpose does this serve other than to annoy me and squeeze some money out of me? Why would you make it terribly inconvenient for me to pay my taxes? Who approved of this?

• BRAC Bank allows me to download this in one click. Your excuse is null.
• The download that you do allow me to take says “Transaction History” instead of “Statement”. Understandable. But you do also realize that Bangladeshi TAX people are annoying AF and they don’t consider this as a statement, don’t you? What’s with this wording game!

^ That’s the Statement I am usually sent via Email.

^ That’s the statement/history that I can download. Not the same stuff.

1. Also, here is the funny part: you guys didn’t send me emails for a couple of months to my email (I presume technical difficulties) and I have no way to get them to be resent or see a version of it on the platform - although the platform has a whole section called “Mailbox”. Wut.

2. But I can just call and get it, right? That’s not as simple as it sounds either. I need to call you guys and listen to a useless IVR, wait 10 minutes on a call that costs me a 1/8th portion of my kidney, and then wait a whole day to get a digital statement emailed over? What? You do realize it’s a digital statement that should be a button somewhere, right?

3. Did you guys ever realize that every time I need to unlock my credit card, I need to spend a minimum of 40 bucks to call you guys? Why couldn’t you just put it on the app? You are wasting your own time too! EBL has a button for this! Like, literally - a button that saves me 40tk every other day would be nice to have, no? Update on Q4 2025 (almost 4 years since the original note was written): I use an MTB Card now and their NEO App also has a one-click button for this feature.

4. Did you realize that your forced-logout screen has no option to log back in again? Sometimes I have to check for multiple things outside the platform, and get logged back out even though I am right there on the screen! The TTL for this is too low. Also, what's this "Continue To Logout" button doing here since I already have been clearly automatically logged out -_-

• What is that “Bangladesh” name on the top left doing? Why can’t I even go to the homepage without editing the name on the address bar?
• Pressing the back button here brings up that weird modal >_<

1. But let’s say I love you guys and want to call you at 2 AM to speak about my hidden agenda of creating a wizard state in Gaibandha or someplace near a lake so that my squid can have a good time with its grandchildren. When I call the support hotline:
   • Hotline does not remember my language preference next time.
   • I have to type in the 16 char card details every time, although I have it paired against my number and it should be unnecessary.
   • When the waiting line gets cut off (after around 5 minutes), nobody calls back (when they are more available). I mean, I was waiting for you guys for a while. I atleast deserve a call-back when your lines are less busy.
   • When I call back, I have to wait for a long time again instead of being put ahead of the queue. There really is no queue, which is something I feel should be a given.
   • The agent manually checks whether I called from my registered number as I wait and accrue an unnecessary bill. Which is weird.
   • The Agent asks me every time whether I use online banking, although they should really know that I do or that I said last time that I do. Or that I said the time before the last time that I do. Or that I said the time before the last time’s last time that I do. I have said this like 50 times already. Why is nobody keeping a note?
2. On the homescreen, exactly who do you expect to copy-paste that URL to read that text? Why is that information not inside a CTA, let alone contextually delivered where it matters?

1. Why isn’t the Credit Card Usage (which is the important number) displayed on the home screen? What good does it do for me to know my remaining credit (a number that I barely care about unless it’s once a decade decision to buy too much and regret later)? The only useful information on this screen should be my current outstanding or my future outstanding sum.
2. A standing order has absolutely nothing to do with paying a bill. These are not properly grouped. In reality, I only click this button when I want to pay the bill itself. Please don’t combine them and create an additional click.

1. You know that I have only one card - so this message (Combined limit across…) is displayed unnecessarily for me! And this is probably the same case for a majority of your customers. A better UX would be when this is only displayed for clients who do have multiple cards.

1. I am on the Card Details screen - and you know whats’ the most important thing (that is missing) here? My bill amount for the next month (whatever I have used till now).

1. Okay, I annoyingly agree that clicking that “Card History” button is necessary for me to understand my bill. But the interesting part here is that the top line, “Current Balance” is my future bill (my billing date is in a few days). The line below it, “Minimum Payment Due” is my minimum due from last month. And the “Due Date” here is from last month’s already-paid bill. I mentioned this on Number One - but I am mentioning this again because I see this problem once a week and I really need you guys to understand how annoying and abnormal this is.

1. Now, coming down to the portion below it - is my actual usage in the past month. All good - looks okay. Except, they are ordered like some 3-year-old child decided to organize it - oldest transaction first - with no way to see the latest transaction first. If I am ever on my statement, I need to see the immediate ones first. Not what happened 30 days ago! At least have an option to manually reorder?

1. And then, why do I have to press the “Next” button here without any pagination? Where is the numbering for these transactions? If I have 300 transactions in a month, I will have to press the next button 30 times to reach the end. Thankfully I am still poor and don’t have to - but can you imagine being rich and then stuck with this interface?

1. And you know what’s more annoying? The fact that nobody realized that I might want:
   • to order by the largest/smallest transaction,
   • alphabetically by the merchant, 
   • grouped by the merchant
   • or even grouped by the transaction type (online, offline, regulars, food, etc)
2. Another annoying part about this transaction page is that you can’t understand what a certain transaction is about because the bank always writes weird stuff like “AUTO DEBIT” but not why it was debited. Like - fine, maybe I owe some money for some transaction. But why couldn’t you just write that this was payment against XX transaction or EMI and XX amount was taken because of XX issue? How does it hurt to keep me informed? Payment received against what?

1. Similar to this screenshot above, I can’t even see/understand which one of my transactions was an EMI transaction, or how many months’ worth of EMI I took against that transaction, or how much was paid.
2. I just want to take another line to press on how much important it is for me to be able to see my EMI Details when the bank does not offer me any! Why am I not allowed to see how much I have paid and how much I have left to be paid in one single screen?
3. I know it’s petty to be mentioned again - but I only have one bank account on that list. Why couldn’t you auto-select it? It looks like a guy who plays Russian Roulette, but with all chambers filled with bullets. 

1. Weird selection behavior is actually present across the application. For instance, the “Delivery by Post” option is pre-selected and does not allow me to change it. In that case, why is it displayed like an option?

2. You might be thinking - okay this guy is annoying and he is just being petty. But wait - here is how petty your interface is:

   • Forces me to select “Single Select” options manually, including showing options that are pre-selected (not changeable) in the same UX as changeable ones (causing lots of agitated clicks on my end).
   • Shows me a “Statement Balance Due” when the balance is clearly paid over 20 days ago.
   • Shows me a “Minimum Due” amount that is not true (due already paid).
   • Displays a “Pay On” date that cannot be changed.
   • Yes, I know this one I have mentioned twice too. But I just want you guys to know how stupid this is because I felt I didn’t complain enough.

1. An interesting fact about this dropdown is how annoying something as inanimate as this can be. Why couldn’t you just list down:
   • Unbilled Transactions
   • Sept 28 - Oct 27
   • Aug 28 - Sept 27
   • And more of this - like normal people who have no problem with displaying transactions from the past and don’t have to charge money for it?

1. Have you guys realized how hidden your options to report a stolen card or request a billing date change are? I had no idea half of these services were available online until I did this audit!
2. Have I complained about the MailBox UX before?

• No filters
• No pagination
• No way to archive
• Really horrible message UX (have you guys opened these to check what this looks like inside?)
• No bulk options like “Mark All as Read” or even “Select All”.
• You can only see 5 at a time almost as if I am using the internet back in the times of Godzilla
• No threading - as in showing the “Bill Payment/Wallet Request Submitted” message and the subsequent “Bill Payment/Wallet Transfer Request Successful” message in one single thread - thus not causing notification fatigue.
• Not displaying time in 12hr format (or at least giving me the option), as is the regular custom in Bangladesh.

27. I know this is a feature request - but why is there no option to download a CSV of transactions here?

1. Did you ever realize that Mobile Topup is hidden in the interface? I have to go to “Bill Payment & Wallet Transfer”, and then go to “One Time Payment”, and then select “Mobile Operators”, and then find that Skitto isn’t even listed on your platform even though it still lists Banglalion - a company that doesn’t really exist anymore. Eeks.

1. Did you ever consider “Auto Debit” for phones/bKash? I always send a specific amount of money to certain phones (as recharge) or certain people (as a transfer) that I cannot automate through the platform. Which is just awkward. It is a feature request, but someone should have thought of this before.
2. Fun fact: if I go through the platform and “Add a Payee”, I can then add my own number as a “Payee” that I can later use to recharge my phone. But the interesting part is that this “Mobile Topup/Recharge” comes up with an ETAC SMS that reads “Your eTAC for Biller/Mobile Wallet Addition ...” - both of which are wrong and grossly misleading!
   • The better fun fact about this is that although I can add this payee, this payee does not appear on the “One Time Transaction” Screen in any way. This means I must again memorize whether my payee is already saved or whether they are on a different screen. How difficult would it be to merge these two screens into one single interface? Just let me add during the action instead of having a separate screen for it.
3. Who in their right mind thought of 10 character eTACS? Like, why is it even necessary?
   • If I am on the app - it does not auto-detect - almost as if to remind me that I live in the early 20th century.
   • So now I have to memorize a 10 character number so I can type it in
   • If I forget, I have to go back and check it and come back and type
   • I know I am repeating myself - but this is just downright annoying and a 3 Character PIN would have done fine in this scenario without any issue. If bKash can do it with 4 characters - you can too
4. All “Services” are under “Help & Services”, but strangely, “Change Fund Transfer Limits” is under the main dropdown. Why? How is this important enough to be here? How many people actually use this regularly?
   • You know what would be nicer instead? The ability to see all of my login details (and activity history) from this screen. Because you only display one single (last) activity here, and it is annoying because if anybody had really hacked me, all they would need to do is to understand that I don’t memorize when I last logged in and that this information is useless to me unless it is compounded with more useful information.

1. A fascinating part about this screen is that it allows me to do nothing productive.
   • Does not allow me to change my email or add a new one
   • Does not allow me to get SMS notifications to a separate device in any different way
   • Does not provide me with an API or a Secure Feed (too much to ask, but I just wanted to splurge)
   • Does not provide any other way to get alerts whatsoever (what if I want to set up a special alert every time there is a foreign transaction)
   • It’s as useful as this point.

1. Okay, this will be the last one: why do you guys show me a “Standing Order Payments” page and then not allow me to create any standing order on my own right here?
   • Also, “No Records Found” is very different from “No Records Exist”, and they are very different things when it comes to sensitive financial data.

1. When I call from a different phone number, I am asked by the agent to call back again from my registered phone. Firstly, its a terrible idea that I must memorize which SIM card is registered - and that I can’t register multiple phones. Why can't you just allow me to register multiple phone numbers against my account?

2. When you get your statement (monthly) emails, your credit card statement email looks like this. 

• Interestingly, the text here says that my password for the file is my 16 digit account number. In reality, my account number is 11 digits. The 16 digit number here is my card number. Imagine giving your bank account number here 5-6 times and feeling stupid the first time.
• This password is awkward and useless. Why can’t I ever change this? Why can’t I get a new password for my files? Atleast 100 people know my bank account number in one way or another. How is this worthy of being my password? 
• You know my name. Why is the email not personalized (pretty please)?

1. Today is December 2nd. I am visiting the Card History screen, and it is empty.
   • I made a transaction in the morning (SMS and Email were sent to me) but this was not updated here. Makes no sense. I have mentioned this above too that it makes no sense that there is an “updating” delay on transactions in 2021. You reduced my credit limit. You sent me an SMS. You sent me an Email. And you couldn’t update it here on this list?
   • Why is this option always limited to the current month/unbilled transactions? Shouldn’t card history display “all” history like every other statement by default?

1. The useless “Print Transactions” button on the Credit History screen only prints the current view in the regular dialog, instead of the logical option of allowing me to print/export the whole list fgs. Who needs this? Why are we trying to replace the default Ctrl+P using a button?

1. Wait till you see this. Someone decided that the whole Card History option should not have any Excel/CSV output. Really? Really? Why? Who hurt you?

1. And oh, no way to filter by transaction type, or value, or date under my Card History. This is not card history guys - this is a Statement History under the disguise of a joke.
2. Let’s say I remember a transaction I did in 2020. I don’t remember the month or the date. But I remember what I wrote for its description while making the transfer. You know what’s SCB’s solution to find it?

• Pay SCB 200tk to get the statement, and then search on it. But you have to wait 2 days.

42. Literally no search anywhere on the application? Why?

43. Who decided that it is adequate for you to display the Transfer History limited by 3 months (or 10 transactions)? Let’s say I send someone X amount every other month to settle a loan - right now, there is absolutely no way for me to see how much money I sent that person over the past year without paying you guys for a statement. What a ridiculous proposition! Also, whats the USD Amount calculated from here? Because I did not send that amount in USD. Is it calculated based on current value or value during the time of transfer? Why does it even exist?

1. This is what happens when I download your CSV files, saying that the file format and extension does not match.

45. Notice how the Transfer Amount is formatted. Making it impossible for me to see a summation without cleaning the data first. Why was this necessary?

46. I paid my CC Dues last night - when the due was already available on the site, but I had not been mailed a statement until then. Why that work is manually done - I will never understand. But what I want to understand is why was I sent this SMS more than 12 hours later, mentioning that I still have a due amount with the bank. I just paid this whole sum last night, and my due is zero!

47. Interesting turn of events. On the 30th of December 2020, I had a transaction that failed for me for a local payment gateway via my Credit Card. Since the payment failed and did not appear instantly on the SCB Credit History, I paid that sum again on January 2, 2021. But the interesting part is this, on January 2, SCB's statement to me showed that the amount from both Jan 2 and Dec 30 was successful and that I have to pay the Dec 30 sum as part of my bill for the cycle. Firstly, why didn't you show me immediately that this was successful? I could have at least received an email, a text, and maybe a line item immediately, no?

Now, sounds like an honest mistake and all - and raising a ticket should help resolve this.

Nope. Not really. I have to pay that extra sum to SCB within my billing date, with no concessions - and they informed me that they will take 45 days (minimum) to up to 60 days to resolve this issue that they caused! This means I have to pay SCB 10,000 BDT for more than 45 days because they can't figure out a basic payment failure in time due to their system fault. My money. Stuck with you guys for 45 days! I mean, 5 days is a standard ETA on this. 10 days is okay. 2 weeks is acceptable. But 5-8 weeks? Bruh you lazy af.

Update: In reality, it did not work out in 45 days. The money hit my bank sometime on March 2022. This is 3 months later, which means that I will only be benefited by this sum on 2nd of April (my billing date). This means that by now, I have been unfairly forced to pay 10,000 taka to SCB, which they held for 3 whole months (around 90 days). At the current rate of inflation at 6%, I lost 200tk in this process and a few of my hairs with it. In burger terms, I lost a whole Chicken Cheese Burger with extra Sausage from Burger Xpress. Which is quite unfair because none of this was my fault.

Notice how the UI for this mentions the date of this transaction as December 30 (the date when the original transaction hit, not the date when the money actually was reversed). Just to clarify, it did not hit my bank on December 30, and appeared on my March Billing cycle, close to 60+ days later. I also had to call them manually and ask what "Transaction Reversal" means and against which transaction is this because I had almost forgotten that they stole my money back in December. Why the stupid and misleading and faulty UX? God knows.

48. On the 19th of January, 2022, I spoke to SCB over the phone to allow me to make a single 355$ transaction using my credit card. SCB informed me that their limit is 300$ and there is no scope of changing this because there is a cap on this. Although Bangladesh Bank allowed it back in Sept 2021 (news), and my transaction is eligible to bypass this limit - SCB was not informed about the matter almost 4 months after the notice and had no scope of bypassing this limit on their backend. Instead, their personnel asked me to request a foreign entity to change their website and take payment in 2 parts instead because their restriction is from the BB and they have nothing to do here. Note that no such restrictions exist, and BRAC Bank does provide this service (they confirmed to me on the same date), and just asking them over a call to unblock a certain payment is usually adequate. Later, I learned that EBL also provides the same service - so the BB Limit is imaginary.

49. I live in Mirpur. Do you know where the closest Branch to me is? It's in Banani, which is a 1-hour 30-minute ride away, at least - on a good day. On a bad day, it takes me at least 2 hours or more. Do you know where the branch closest to Banani is? A 10-minute ride away in Gulshan 2. Do you know where the closest branch to that is? It's a 10-minute ride away in Gulshan once again! If you travel another 20 minutes, you will find another branch in Tejgaon. Five minutes away, there is a branch near Panthapath. Who decided to bunch together all branches in one place and completely forgo the rest of the city like that? If you don't want people to come to your branches, why do you maintain so many branch-based services that cost me time and money, and effort to reach out to you for silly things that could have been handled online very easily?

50. Notice the image below. On the left, you will notice that I received 3964+2500 in two different transactions on the 29th of January. The screenshots are from 30th January (well past 3 PM) so I assume it has been more than 24 hours since these deposits took place. Yet, my Inbox Notifications do not display these transactions. Neither does my SMS/Email thread. More annoyingly, there is no information whatsoever regarding where the money came from. What bank did it come from? Who was the user? Why is there no additional information here? Why should I have to guess where the money came from? What is this?

51. This is the year 2022. Technology has progressed so much that humans are now capable of living on Mars quite comfortably. SCB still has not figured out how to allow me to log in to two different phones at the same time. I have two phones. Why should I be forced to choose one over the other? What if one is near my bed and the other is in another room? Why can't I just automatically get logged out of the other instead of this nonsense? You allow me to log in and perform the same set of actions from two different desktops. So why not here?

53. This is a repeat - but the problem is repeating in multiple ways so it's necessary for me to mention this again. Notice the SMS screenshot below. That says my bill is paid. See the one sent 1 day after the previous one? That says I haven't paid and it's still due. Why do you want to confuse me in so many different ways? How have I hurt you? How can my statement (generated automatically many hours after payment) not reflect my latest payment that you have already recognized as paid via SMS and Email (and cut my money off from my account too, so it's not like you don't know at that point)?

54. This is the 13th of March, 2022. The world has a lot of problems. Russia is in a war with the rest of the world. We just forgot about Covid one fine morning. But Standard Chartered Bank is yet to figure out the fact that my Available and my Current Balance can't be different figures. Yes, I had 56,624.03 in this account. Yes, I know I had a 5000tk deposit from an SCB account. No, it is not acceptable that hours after that transaction, SCB hasn't managed to add that line item to my Account History even though they have already added it to my Available Balance and I am already allowed to spend that money.

Update: I realized close to a year after writing this that this value is okay and the Current Balance here is only for the specific row (what the value was after a certain transaction). I understand that this is how accounting guys look at their financials - but this is not how we read a table (we expect the last data to be a summation). This is terrible UX and needs improvement for sure.

55. Guys, super uncool that everytime I reload your page to see updates, you log me out automatically. Like, it was a reload. I am not trying to hack into the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. I reloaded my dashboard. Why would you log me out?

56. What does "Finance Charges" mean? Against which finance? Why is your finance charging me money? Where did this come from? At which rate? Why are you trying to hide the fact that you charged me money to transfer a Credit Card Transaction to Flexpay/EMI although this "Finance Charge" was not mentioned anywhere within that application form and was not approved of? Why are you hiding a transaction as small as 100tk? Do I trust you more after noticing this, or less? Why do I have to call and ask people what this means? How do I get a reference to this transaction? What if I applied for two EMI's? How do I know which one is which? How do I know how this was calculated?

57. On the 16th of April, 2022 - I tried to do a purchase via my Credit Card (and my Debit Card) - which failed without any logic even after 4 tries. Why the bank was refusing the transaction - only they know. But it was a pretty time-sensitive transaction, and I had to resort to BRAC Bank to do it later (which worked fine, so it wasn't an issue with the payment processor).

I then resorted to calling the SCB Helpline and spent 12.5 minutes in the waiting line. Nobody picked up. I spent a little over 28 taka on the call listening to that horrible waiting message. Nobody bothered to call me back later. I did not receive an email regarding why the transactions failed out of nowhere. I could not contact my bank at that time either.

This also means that if I needed to call the bank to unlock my foreign transaction part - I wouldn't have received any help at that hour. Now, don't tell me that there were millions of people calling at that hour either. It was 12:30 AM - and I am certain that the call center just did not have anybody working at that time. I understand that it's Ramadan and there can be trouble manning the shifts - but it's quite unacceptable that I am forced to contact the bank and spend my money and you aren't even telling me that there isn't anybody behind the counter or even someone who bothers to call me back.

I can accept the loss of money and the lack of service, but why waste my time?

58. It is April 25th, 2022. I called SCB's helpline to request for my Credit Card's Foreign Part to be activated. I was informed over a call that their system is down. VISA isn't down. SCB's internal application that allows them to turn it on and off is down. I had a very emergency transaction that I must make within 3 hours. They have no ETA on how much time it might take them to fix this.

At 10 AM today, my RM was supposed to email me a file from SCB. He told me almost 1 hour ago that he sent it. But I haven't received it yet. Checked multiple times. No email. I use Gmail and they aren't down. So I am assuming it's SCB's fault and probably their servers are down altogether. I have a meeting that's getting delayed because I am supposed to wait for this file and sign it before I take off.

What a terrible day to be an avid fan of SCB :(

59. Followup on the previous issue:

I received the email after almost 1.5 hours. Makes sense. Technical issues can happen. No biggie. I was sent some paperwork as a .7zip file. With a passcode. I downloaded the 7zip extractor to try and extract it. I knew the password (123, terrible choice, I know). It wasn't working. Couldn't extract it. I am a CS Grad. If I can't figure it out, then my father can't either. He is an SCB Client. You shouldn't be doing this to him.

I was getting super delayed.

My RM was very helpful. He took pictures of the form (from his monitor), and sent me pictures of the form from his monitor to my WhatsApp. He couldn't send the file to me directly. Weird. But okay. I love the effort. And I love the fact that he was trying to make my life easier. Fantastic.

But I didn't feel like printing something that looked so weird and signing that. Felt unprofessional.

I decided to upload the file to a random zip file unlocker. It managed to unlock the file (I didn't have to give the password - they brute-forced it in ~2 minutes). I downloaded it, printed 3 pages of it, signed 2-3 mandatory places, scanned it, and emailed it back. Took me like 20 minutes to finish the process.

Sounds fantastic. Good service.

But only if you have never heard of services like DocSend, Adobe Sign, Highspot, PandaDoc, HelloSign, etc. I mean, it's 2022 guys. You can take a signature digitally. Look it up. It's dependable, quite simple, and takes barely a minute.

Why are you making me unzip a file, print 3 out of like 50 pages, and then sign it manually, and then scan it, and then email it back with very specific email instructions (like how I have to attach that same zip file back to the email)? Why would you do that to me? Just ask me to reply yes to that email. Just send a URL where I can put in a digital sign. Or build it inside your web application. Please do something that is not so terribly designed. Can you imagine a 60-year-old doing this? Those guys are your biggest clients!

60. Let's say you got inside your App to send someone a little money. You need to send them the transaction details as proof of payment. Sounds easy. But not really. First off, you can't take a screenshot in the app. Second off, you can't copy off the transaction details either. No option appears. Almost as if someone really dumb made this. How are screenshots from my app harmful? Why can't I just copy off the huge transaction ID? Why do you want to make my life so difficult?

Nevertheless, you imagine that it will just be simpler to log into the web application and take a screenshot, right? Well, you walk to the other room, get your laptop, and turn it on - only to discover that SCB won't let you log in because you logged in to your app 20+ minutes ago. Why can't you just end that session? Why not just let me log in here and block that session if the sessions concern you so much? Why do I have to call the bank for further assistance regarding a digital service? Why the unnecessary hassle for me?

Update on June 30, 2022: I am unable to log in due to this stupid reason once again. My phone and my desktop are right in front of me. I am not logged in anywhere else for sure. This is the 2nd time today that I am facing this issue, in a span of 2 hours. What kind of session ID hasn't expired in 2 hours? Why was I forced to call the bank and spend 8 minutes and 16tk on the phone to get myself unlocked out of a problem I did not create?

61. Today (Jan 2023), I was charged 40 paisa for the 7th installment of a 6-installment EMI. Yes, you read that right. How there can be a 7th Installment out of a 6 Installment EMI is one problem. The fact that this system doesn't validate installment counts is another problem. The annoying problem is that it will cost me 50tk to figure out why I was charged this 0.4tk installment.

62. This is the 4th of June, 2023. Everybody at work is pissed because SCB has not deposited our salaries on time for the last two months. They made two commitments over last week and failed those - which makes it a 5-day delay of sorts. Why money from the bank can't be deposited in a few minutes instead of requiring manual intervention - I won't ever understand.

Anyways, this got me to a strange event when SCB deducted an EMI from my empty bank account and left an odd value on the UI. Why does it say Available Balance when there is no available balance? Apparently negative bank balances are denoted with a DR at the end of the text - because a negative sign would be too mainstream and usual bank customers are expected to take a lesson on Terrible Banking UX to learn what their homepage says. Who thinks of these? Why do they have jobs?

63. I paid my Credit Card Due partially from another bank. Within minutes, I received an SMS from SCB saying that my balance is partially paid off and they have received it. It has been 2 hours since then, and the Dashboard has not updated yet to reflect the original due amount after the payment. Keno bhai?

64. This is August 2, 2023. For the last 72 hours, I have been struggling with the SCB App. I can't send money anywhere because the OTP/eTAC never comes to my number, and nor do I receive the OTP via email (it came once to my email the last time). Something is down. On Sunday the whole app was down through the whole day and I could not even login. My money is stuck in the bank. I really need to transfer to bKash so that I can do a transaction. But there is no way to circumvent the OTP issue. They don't support any Authenticators, or other alternatives. There is no way for me to get a set of passes that I can store for days like this. This is ludicrous. Who designed a system without a failsafe? I have a guy waiting in front of a store who is expecting money. Now I can't access my own money and have to go somewhere else to find a non-existent ATM network and spend money to cash out a small sum? I then spent 15 minutes on the helpline to try and raise a complaint. Why would you do that to me?

65. This is November 2023. I was mailed my Statement as a .7z file (a 47 Kilobyte file was zipped down to 39 kilobytes). A 7z file cannot be opened on an M1 Macbook. It is password protected and the default MacOS unzipper can't work with it at all. My office MacBook does not allow me to install the 7ZIP unzipper because it is not available on the official App Store (and it does not even support the M1 Macs even if I can get permission to install something off a non-registered developer). Whoever at SCB decided to send a PDF file after 7Zipping it in a proprietary format to reduce 8 kilobytes is an absolute idiot who does not understand his corporate users. I could not use the file. I could not view it. I could not even print it without finding a personal computer with Windows installed on it. There is no excuse for giving so much unnecessary pain to its users for something that adds absolutely no value.

66. This is November 2024. I wanted to get a statement for the last year's TAX returns. Guess what - they wouldn't allow me to request for a statement online with this odd and stupid limit. This is the 1st complaint I ever had (and how this whole thread started). But I want to keep mentioning this until they fix it. Now I have to go and call them and ask for it to be delivered over mail and get charged for it. Or I have to go there and pick a copy up myself. So it is really annoying every single year.

67. This is almost the end of 2024. Christmas is in a few days. It was today that I realized I can't get a loan statement from Standard Chartered Bank online. I can either visit a branch, or wait a week and get a paper over mail. Just a scanned copy isn't their thing. No expedited deliveries possible either. The only usecase of this is that I will scan it and send it to someone. But SCB seems to disagree about the use case and thinks I really need a physical copy. Very unimpressive. BRAC Bank just mailed theirs over in like 30 seconds. Wake up guys. Its no longer the ice age!

68. I found an interesting race condition for SCB. Put in two different BEFTN transactions on a weekend. They will execute it on the Sunday morning. In between, your Available Balance will not reflect the fact that you have already spent the money (as in, you put in a transaction but your available balance remains where it was - which is grossly untrue and it should have been deducted). Which sucks to begin with - but I can live with it. But, the SMS they send - both of them will say that your balance is 123 amount. As in, between the first and the 2nd SMS, the accurate balance is not displayed and they reach a race condition. I understand what causes it. But a bank that can't handle race conditions with financial data should not be handling financial data, to be honest.

69. This is May 5, 2025. Remember the old issue where SCB App would show you the bill (and ask you to pay) even though you already paid? My wife fell victim to it and paid twice today by mistake (you see a bill and you pay, isn't that how it works?). You know what else sucked? They didn't return the money - instead saying that her current balance (what she used but hasn't even been billed yet) will be adjusted against it, and they won't refund the amount. Mark my words - she was just forced to pay a bill that wasn't even billed yet. Just because they got the money, they went full "finders keepers, we're keeping it bitches" mode. If there was a word describing corporate evil - that would be best description for it.

70. This is May 6, 2025. SCB is down altogether. My Debit Card wasn't working (so I went to 4 different ATM's to check) and then realized I can't even login to their App. Look, I work in IT Teams. I understand downtimes. You know what would have been cool though? Sending me an SMS and letting me know that your systems are down and I can't access my own money for a while. Would have been better than walking across Dhaka in this summer heat and not understanding why you can't cash out.

72. SCB did a weird ass thing today. My dad has his SCB password saved in a secure way. He did not forget it. But today, it stopped working - forcing him to reset password. This is unprofessional and unexpected, and makes me think there is a security issue. But regardless, this is part of a few very interesting set of events (especially because of point 74 occurring just a few days ago). But you know what really sucks? They validate the password once you click save, and then wipe off the field. So if your new password isn't upto standards - you have to re-type a new one, and then re-save it for validation again. Bro, this validation could have been done on the front end! What kind of a UX person approved of this? Especially given that your API's have no validation!

73. A colleague wrote on our internal channel: "I mistakenly deleted my 1 year statement. Rather going to the bank, I tried looking at their network calls. and was able to bypass their date range check. Seems like only frontend validation." Bruhhhhhh whaaat. I complained so much about something that I could have circumvented using a burpsuite script?

74. You should read this post. Linked underneath is this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, and this post. Beyond these, each of those posts have comments that you should read too! Because there are more people there complaining about the same security breach! Its a security nightmare, to be specefic. Its a customer service nightmare. Its a policy nightmare. Its a service nightmare. Its proof that SCB's services are dwindling like crazy! I have a copy with a translation here of the original post (just in case you manage to take some stuff down). It didn't happen to me. But what if it did? Is this how my bank is supposed to support me? As I write this almost 7 days later - you know what SCB has done so far? You sent me 2 SMS-es to tell me to not share my OTPs (gaslighting much?) and then sent another update that you have stopped transactions to bKash via my Card. Every other bank card works - except my SCB. What amazing security! Huh!

75. You guys do realize that s*******at is a free URL shortening service, and people could impersonate the bank using this, right? Why would a bank use a 3rd party URL shortener as an official message? You own sc.com - which is a whole five characters shorter than the one you used! How is the schedule of charges even relevant? Even my SMS app knows this is a potential security threat! Tsk tsk tsk.

76. And you know what's crazier? That URL actually tries to download a shady PDF from a non-ssl site! I thought this was a joke - but that SMS is verified and coming from +88 01819 399999, which is SCB's official number locally. Couldn't you just use your shortcode instead? I have been receiving texts from that number since 2021, even though you do have a registered shortcode with StanChartBD.

77. Today, a friend and ex-colleague called SCB to get a PL (not even 50% of the usual amount). He has perfect credit score (no unpaid bills, no history of loans), and should be eligible by any means. His DBR ratio will not even take a dent with this EMI. SCB folks just recieved his call, figured out his salary account is no longer a salary account because he left the company (plus the company stopped banking with SCB too), and said they can't give him a loan just because of that. He has held an account with this bank for more than 8 years. They have 8 years of his salary information. He has a credit card with them (bad idea though). He still holds a stable global job and earns multiples of what he was earning locally. He gets paid through official channels in another bank (so its easily verifiable). Refusing a loan just because he doesn't have a salary account with SCB sounds like this is a banker from the 1980s. Your loss though. EBL agreed to start paperwork right on the phone call.

What absurd rules though! I mean, in the age when companies do your credit rating with just your phone number, SCB needs you to hold a salary account?

78. Okay this one is the absolute funniest. I tried to pay my wife's CC Bill from my SCB App. Guess what? You can pay for every single bank's Credit Card from the App, except their own.

Yep. You heard me right. When I try to add a SC Beneficiary, it only accepts an Account Number (so you can't add a card). When I try to add an external beneficiary (which supports cards), it doesn't have SCB on that bank list (that list is a UX joke by the way). I thought I was just being dumb or something along that line. I thought I was missing something. Maybe there is a hidden button somewhere. Maybe its just my fault. Maybe its not them, its me.

But guess what? I called their helpline and they confirmed they don't support this. Yep, you can't pay for a Standard Chartered Bank Credit Card from their own App if the card doesn't belong to your account. You can pay all other cards - even ones that you don't own. But just not if its an SCB Card.

Merlin's beard - how can a bank be so dense?

79. Two ridiculous things happened today (October 3rd, 2025).

First, I recieved money on 4th October as per their SMS. It is 3rd October today. 4th October is still around 10 hours away. When I recieved the SMS, it was almost 22 hours away. It can't be a timezone issue. I recieved money in the future.

Ridiculous bit two: notice how it says my balance is 95,775.12? That's not what it is after the deposit. Infact, I had this balance before the deposit ever happened. Which you can see on their online portal. It still doesn't have the latest transaction, and yet my balance comes up as the same there. Plus, it also says 4th Oct there (that transaction actually happened on the 2nd of October) >_< Just so they can't say its a problem with my machine time - I have kept that on the screenshot here as a proof that my machine is still on October 3rd and I have not time travelled.

How can a serious bank possibly fuckup dates and ledger values together on the same day?

80. Woke up in the morning and needed to quickly send some money to a delivery man. He only accepts bKash. You know what I discovered? I can no longer send any money to bKash from SCB.

At first, I thought this was some kind of CSS issue that I can't find any button to click here. I mean, if its disabled, I should expect some kind of banner/error?

So I called the bank to ask what's up. And they informed me that they sent me an SMS to inform me instead. UX can go lick its tail or something along that line. No deadlines, no banner on the UI, just a good old SMS.

So yeah, now I am stuck with money in the bank that I can't send to the one place that I usually send money to. Now I have to go find one of the non-existent ATM's to cash out money because half the other banks don't even allow me to cashout from SCB.

Sometimes I wake up and I feel sad that I am still stupid enough to not close up my Standard Chartered Bank Account altogether.

81. Nov 24, 2025: Realized today that I can't pay my WASA Bills, or my Triangle Bills through SCB because they are not listed on your platform. You know how I can pay those easily? Using bKash. You know what I also can't do from SCB now? Send my own money to bKash.

82. Oh this is beautiful. When I try to pay DESCO Bills using SCB, it asks for a Bill Number. I use a pre-paid account. There is no bill number for those. We have an account number where we recharge. So this option is also useless for almost all users. I wonder if there is anybody left in Dhaka who uses the old bill-number kind of setup. I have been using the new meter since 2018 (in the last 7 years, almost everybody I know has since been upgraded). When was this integration last maintained?

83. I have a lot of complaints about this following transaction screen:

a. Notice the typo on that first line. This typo has been there for the last 3-4 years. Multiple years and nobody notices? Let's disregard that. Why aren't the transfer history or online banking mailboxes linked (so that its easier to find them)?

b. Why doesn't it confirm at which schedule it will be deposited/executed? How do I know if I hit the BEFTN cut-off for that day? I did the transaction at 2 PM, will it be executed today or tomorrow?

c. What does the Indicative Exchange Rate mean? I am not exchanging anything. Why the .0000000 almost as if nobody knows how to round off a number around here?

d. What charges? How much was I charged? What does OUR mean? Do you mean YOUR? How much is the charge exactly and what is the VAT/TAX for this transaction? How can you not know even though you charged me right now? Do I deserve a receipt/detail of this charge? Why not?

e. Notice how it says I should go to another page for an update? Why couldn't one websocket call be used to show me the success right here? A small status pill can't hurt that much!

84. Misleading numbers again. How can two transactions happen and yet my available balance be same? Is this acceptable in the financial world to send misleading statements like these?

85. Do you guys ever consider that these kinds of SMS are really unhelpful? Why was I billed? What bill is this? I know this is some kind of service charge. But why are you hiding what it is? I haven't taken any service from SCB today. So why did I get this SMS?

86. On the 26th of Jan, I requested for a Loan Statement. I recieved the following two emails. One says request recieved, and another says request fulfilled on Jan 28th. I still haven't recieved the document yet, and its end of day on Jan 29th now. You guys know what you fulfilled.

So naturally, I called Support Helpline to ask what's up. You know what they said? They told me I should email your customer.qnquiries@sc email address instead, because they have no idea where my document is. Apparently they can't track requests that I place through your own portal. I hope you realize how funny it sounds that your own helpline folks can't track details of a request if the request is placed directly on your portal.

The original request email says I can get a Status online. I assumed I might get the file there. But no, its just the same useless data.

It could have been delivered over email, online, on the day I placed the request. It should honestly be an automated report. I could have been saved the trouble of going through this for three goddamn days :(

Update: I recieved the file over snail mail around 15 days after the initial request. I had sent two mails and two calls for updates by then. Almost forgot it because I had organized a different solution and I knew this would not arrive on time. The delivery man did not even call me. Just dropped the mail to my building security and left. No sense of privacy or accountability. The update over email never came to me. Nobody even reached out to discuss how they can solve my problem.

87. For years, I have paid my VISA Credit Card Bills (with another bank - because SCB services suck) via BEFTN (essentially next day deposit). I thought since SCB only supports this, it must be the only way to pay my credit card bills. I got used to planning in advance and paying a day in advance of the due date (and sometimes days before in case of holiday schedules). Worked. I wasn't pissed. I thought the world moves at a snail's pace.

Well until I was informed by a colleague that I can pay it via VISA Direct, a service by BRAC Bank. Instant deposit to my card. Just an option on the BRAC Bank App where I need to go and pay. That's it. No hanky panky next day deposits. Also discovered that payments via bKash also get deposited within minutes. But not SCB payments. SCB Payments take the overnight train and arrive in style next morning.

You guys need to level up!

88. Guys, you do realize that documents are usually PDF, right? Even your own documents are PDF's that you deliver in .7zip format. Why force me to upload an image of a multi-page PDF? Also, that "Take photo" button is useless. I can only upload and it does not allow me to open my camera instead.

89. Did you guys just implement a block on brackets and hyphens? Why? What sense does it make? Why can't I type in a bracket to explain my issue? Who asked you to validate that?

90. Through April 13 and April 15 of 2026, my transactions with Grab Food have been failing. Rides work fine. The SCB Credit Card works fine in a lot of places (I have made multiple payments before and after the failures). But for Grab Food, it doesn't work at all. But when I use my MTB Card, it works fine. Even my basic BRAC Bank Card works fine with Grab. I did two more transactions at malls which also failed with SCB, but worked fine with my MTB card. At almost four or five different ATMs, my SCB Card failed to work. In each case, either MTB or BRAC cards worked just fine. If you are abroad and stuck to your card for payment challenges, then stuff like these really spoil your trust. If there is a failure, why can't I see it on the App? In some cases you send me an OTP, and even after that fail the transaction. Why? I even informed you guys that I am travelling so Grab charges are expected for you guys. Makes no sense. You don't even send me OTP to my email or on the app, so I have to make sure my Roaming is turned on (which incurs a huge cost) just to get your OTP, which then fails anyways. Why? Do I atleast deserve an update asto what happened?

91. This is the 1st of June, 2026. I went almost cash-broke in my own city while I had money sitting in the bank. I spent the better part of a day going from machine to machine trying to pull out my own cash. I tried DBBL, BRAC, Islami Bank, UCB, and a couple of smaller ones I would rather not embarrass by naming. Not a single one of them would let an SCB card withdraw one taka. This is not news to anyone who banks with you, because you have never bothered to build a proper ATM network of your own, and it turns out half the country's ATMs will not talk to your cards either.

And here is the cherry on top. The one escape hatch that every other bank customer in this country has, which is to send a bit of money to bKash and cash it out at the agent two shops down, is the exact thing you have now blocked from my card. So I had money. I just could not reach it. No ATMs of your own, no ATM partners willing to serve your card, and no bKash route out of the bank. Money I owned and could not touch, on a working day, in Mirpur.

92. This is the 3rd of June, 2026. I made a Credit Card transaction. You sent me an email saying it went through. You sent me an SMS saying it went through. You issued an OTP, I typed the OTP in, you took the money off me, and then you confirmed the whole thing twice across two separate channels.

And then the transaction simply does not exist. There is no record of it anywhere on my online dashboard. Not a successful line item, not a failed one, not a pending one, nothing at all. As far as your own portal is concerned, I never even attempted it. So explain to me how that works. You generated an OTP, you validated it, you debited me, you fired off both an email and an SMS, and then you lost every trace that any of it ever happened. A transaction does not get to disappear after you have already told me twice that it succeeded and pulled my money for it. Where did it go? Who am I even supposed to ask?

Update (19 June 2026): Here is how this one resolved, or rather how it refused to. When I first called about the missing transaction, you told me it had been successful and that I should take it up with the vendor. The vendor, a local e-commerce site, said they never received a taka. So I climbed one link up the chain to SSLCommerz, the payment gateway that sits between you and half the shops in this country, and they told me the same thing. Nothing had reached them either. So I called you a third time, now with both the merchant and the gateway on record saying no money had landed anywhere. Your response was that you could not "negate" the transaction yet. I would have to wait thirteen days, and if no merchant claimed the money in that window, it would find its way back to me. I still have no idea where the number thirteen came from.

So I waited, and on the 19th, comfortably past those thirteen days, I called again. The agent opened with "sir, I can see the transaction." I told him that made no sense, because after thirteen days the thing should have been cancelled and the money returned. He paused, rechecked, and then performed a small piece of improvised arithmetic I am still not over. He never found my transaction as a line item, because there isn't one to find. Instead he took my total credit limit, subtracted my current usage, looked at the number left over, and from that reasoned backwards that the transaction could not exist, since it wasn't eating into my usable balance. That is how my own bank decided whether a real payment had actually happened: not by retrieving the transaction, which it apparently cannot do, but by subtracting one number from another and inferring the rest.

What genuinely worries me is that your own call centre staff have no way to see whether a transaction was cancelled. They can't give me a definite answer, so they fall back on mental arithmetic that doesn't convince me and, I suspect, doesn't convince them either. A cancelled transaction should be a row in a table that says cancelled, with a date and a reason, and an agent should be able to read it back to me in five seconds.

But the deeper failure is the experience wrapped around all of it. I made a payment. You texted me that it succeeded. The moment you decided it hadn't, I should have received an email, or an SMS, or at the very least a status on the app marking that transaction as withdrawn or cancelled or failed. Instead, to this day, the transaction does not appear in my app at all, no cancellation email ever reached me, no SMS did either, and my vendor was told absolutely nothing. So if this transaction genuinely existed at some point, why can I not see it anywhere? And if it never existed, what exactly did you debit me for and text me about on the 3rd of June? Whoever signed off on an experience this incoherent should not be allowed within arm's reach of other people's money.

93. This is the 7th of June, 2026. I woke up to an SMS that read "Dear Client, BDT [amount] was debited from Acc. ending xxxxxxxx1234 on 07-Jun-26. Available balance is now BDT [amount]. For Inquiries, please call 16233." Reads perfectly normal. Except I made no transaction today. So why did money just leave my account out of nowhere?

As it turns out, I did make this transaction. Last Thursday night. And back then your app cheerfully showed me that the money had already left my account, so I planned the rest of my week around a balance you had supposedly already reduced. Except you hadn't reduced anything. You sat on the deduction for days and actually pulled the money today, on the 7th, after I had run a whole pile of other transactions in between.

Here is the part that should worry you more than it worries me. What if I had spent down close to zero by today, trusting the balance your own app showed me on Thursday? Would this delayed settlement have bounced? From everything I have seen on this platform across four years, yes, it absolutely would have. The transaction happened on Thursday, so the money should have left on Thursday, not on a random morning four days later when your ledger finally felt like catching up. A debit is not supposed to arrive as a surprise you post to me half a week later. This bank is genuinely bonkers sometimes.

94. This is the 19th of June, 2026. I called the bank today to take a small cash advance on my credit card. This is the most ordinary thing a credit card does. I have taken it before, more than once, and I have always been eligible. For many years, I have used this feature as a good way to avoid bad card charges. SCB also always calls me or reminds me after regular calls that I can take it if I want to. Infact I used to be annoyed asto why they would push this so much all the time.

The most obvious failure is that there's no button for this anywhere. Not in the app, not on the website, nowhere. I hold one of your cards, this feature has existed since roughly the invention of the credit card, and every other bank in the country lets me do it from my phone in seconds. You make me call and wait on a line.

I waited about seven minutes on the line before an agent picked up. Then came four more minutes of verification that now somehow requires me to recite my father's name and read back old transaction details, the kind of theatre most modern banks quietly dropped years ago. By the time I had proven I was Saquif, I could have finished the whole action on an app and saved you money.

And then the agent told me, very politely, that they could not extend this cash advance to me. So I asked what the problem was. Did I have a pending dispute? Was it a limit issue? My card sits mostly unused. I have several hundred thousand taka of headroom on it. I keep cash in the account, my salary lands there every month, and I'd used the account earlier that same day. So why exactly could I not draw a small fraction of my own available credit?

The agent's answer is the part that worried me, because he said he genuinely didn't know. Not "let me check," not "there's a hold for such-and-such reason." He had no idea why I wasn't eligible. Apparently there is a list, I am not on it this month, and I should wait and see whether I appear on it next month. He couldn't tell me what puts a person on the list, what takes them off, or what I'd need to do differently to qualify.

So I started to worry it was me. Maybe my CIB report carried a flag I didn't know about. I checked. I hold a positive balance with you, I owe you nothing past schedule, my account is active, my card works, and the agent himself confirmed I could convert my existing card spend into EMIs. I just couldn't take cash. I could walk out and spend roughly five times the amount I wanted on the card and then turn that into an installment plan, but you would not hand me a far smaller sum in cash. I genuinely had to sit with that one for a moment.

So I tested whether cash advances had simply been switched off for everyone. My wife called the same bank, on the same kind of card, and she was eligible. She could have taken the exact offer I'd just been refused. That's when I got properly uneasy, because it clearly wasn't a blanket policy. It was me, specifically, for a reason nobody at the bank could name.

I have built credit scoring systems for a living. I know how the machinery works, I pay on time on purpose, and I keep my credit clean as a matter of habit. There's no honest reason to deny me this. But an ordinary person can't ring up Bangladesh Bank and ask what their own standing looks like, so the only way to test whether I'd been quietly damaged was to ask someone else. I walked over to Mutual Trust Bank, and they offered me the same amount on the spot. I took it from them. Then, mostly out of spite, I called BRAC Bank, where I also keep an account, and they confirmed the same with no hesitation at all.

So all of this achieved precisely nothing, except to leave a sour taste. I honestly don't mind being refused. A bank is allowed to say no. What I mind is that not one person in the chain, including the staff whose entire job is to help me, could tell me why the answer was no. Someone inside the building decides eligibility, hands down the verdict, and then keeps the criteria hidden from both the customer and the employees who have to face that customer. I'm not eligible, I'm not permitted to know why, and I'm told to wait the roughly eleven days until next month and try again. If nothing about me changes, why would July be any different? And if it does turn into a yes with nothing else having changed, what was this month's no actually measuring?

What genuinely saddens me is that nobody at this bank appears to use the bank. If they did, they'd have noticed that their own people are stranded, saying "I don't know" with real helplessness in their voices. These are the agents meant to rescue me, and half the time I want to reach through the phone and reassure them, because they clearly need it more than I do.

Update, 30th of July, 2026. I got my answer a month later, and it is somehow worse than having no answer at all. Genex, the partner that makes outbound calls on the bank's behalf, rang me today to tell me I am eligible for the cash advance this month and that I should go ahead and take it. Same card, same salary account, same clean record, same everything. Nothing about me changed between June and July. So I asked the obvious question: what was different last month? He told me he genuinely had no idea, and that the bank does not share that data with the people it pays to sell its products.

So the criteria are hidden from the customer, hidden from the helpline agent, and hidden from the outsourced partner whose entire job is to pitch me the thing. Three separate layers of people involved in one small cash advance, and not one of them can see the rule that decides it. Which answers the question I left open last month in exactly the way I feared. June's no was not measuring anything about me. It was measuring some internal switch that nobody in the chain is allowed to look at, and July's yes is not a decision either, it is the same switch pointing the other way. I would much rather be refused for a reason I can argue with than approved by a coin flip I am not permitted to see.

95. This is the 24th of August, 2026, around 7 in the evening. I stopped at an SCB booth to withdraw cash. I had my BRAC Bank card on me, so I tried that first. It would not work. I tried my Mutual Trust Bank card next. That did not work either. Then I tried the Standard Chartered card, and of course, that one worked fine.

Think about what that arrangement actually says. Standard Chartered has a small footprint of booths in this city, so the bank fully expects me to walk into somebody else's ATM and use my SCB card there. That only works because those other banks accept cards that are not theirs. Meanwhile SCB's own booth turns away a BRAC Bank customer and an MTB customer standing right in front of it. You want every other bank in the country to carry your customers, and you will not carry theirs.

It is a small thing at 7 PM when I happen to have the right card in my wallet. It is not a small thing for whoever walks up after me with only a BRAC card and no idea that this particular booth is closed to them.

--

So yes, if you have bothered to read all the way down here, I am well past hurt and annoyed by now. I have complained for years, filled in those character-limited feedback boxes more times than I can count, and watched precisely none of it get fixed. Four years in, the bugs do not just survive, they multiply. I walked into June 2026 going cash-broke in my own city with money in the bank, getting debited four days late for a transaction I had already been told was settled, and watching a payment I made and paid for vanish clean off the record. Honestly, I am just tired of this shit.

Thus, I will continue maintaining this public blog listing everything else that I notice until someone decides to care.

Yes, this article had a different name before because I started with 16 issues and now I am at 95 and counting. Yes, the formatting on this is a little weird. Not my fault, I promise. This theme is too old and bonkers.