Sudan's Bankak App Glitches Raise Regulatory Concerns

The persistent malfunctioning of banking application Bankak, Sudans most widely used banking application, has deepened customers’ difficulties and become a source of considerable frustration, despite a recent update announced by the management of the Bank of Khartoum. More than 10m people subscribe to Bankak , making it Sudan’s leading banking application. Other services include Fawry, operated by Faisal Islamic Bank, O-Cash, operated by Omdurman National Bank, and Sahel, operated by Nile Bank, as well as applications offered by Al Baraka, Mashreq, and Al Tadamon. Bankak has recently experienced an unprecedented level of disruption, despite assurances from the bank’s management that the problems are being addressed. Mohamed Fadlallah, a resident of Port Sudan, tells Radio Dabanga that customers face severe difficulties in making money transfers, with traders sometimes refusing payments because notifications do not arrive. The application, he says, may freeze or fail to open altogether, leaving customers unable to pay for purchases or obtain essential goods and, in some cases, causing crowds to build up outside shops. The problem can persist for more than a week or ten days, he adds, rendering the application effectively unusable and creating considerable embarrassment for people attempting to make everyday purchases. The Bank of Khartoum released a new version of its popular Bankak banking application for Android two days ago, in an effort to address widespread technical problems that have affected hundreds of thousands of customers inside and outside Sudan. The new version includes bug fixes, although the bank does not specify in detail which problems have been addressed or which services have been repaired. Several customers, however, say that the application’s performance has not improved despite installing the update. Economists, meanwhile, warn of the dangers inherent in Bankak’s dominance and the structural and economic risks that accompany it. The dependence of an entire country’s daily economy on a single banking application creates a “central point of failure”, they argue. Any sudden outage or technical failure affecting the Bank of Khartoum’s servers can immediately bring buying, selling, and the payment of basic necessities to a near standstill. Such concentration also weakens fair competition and reduces incentives for innovation among other banks, which have largely settled into secondary roles. Some, including Faisal Islamic Bank and Omdurman National Bank, possess substantial financial resources and could compete more aggressively if their digital services were restructured with greater ambition. A more effective way to manage outages In a related development, Major General of Police (Retired) Dr Essam al-Din Abbas, an information technology and data-analysis systems consultant, says that major outages should be treated as “operational incidents”, rather than as ordinary technical faults. Modern banking systems have standard procedures for managing such incidents, he says, beginning with the activation of an incident-response plan and an assessment of the nature and scale of the problem. The essential steps include determining the severity and impact of the incident, the number of customers affected, the services that have stopped working, whether customers’ money is secure, and whether the problem is confined to the user interface or extends to the central transaction system. Immediate and transparent communication with the public is also crucial, he says. “There is no need to disclose sensitive security details, but the customer has the right to know: what is the general nature of the outage? Which services are affected? Are funds and balances safe? What alternatives are available? And when is the next update on the situation expected?” One necessary measure, he adds, is the creation of an official channel for updating customers on the status of services, rather than leaving citizens dependent on WhatsApp, Fac