BOV restores 3rd party payments

Confirming its latest statement on February 22, Bank of Valletta (BOV) announced that its third-party payment services outside the eurozone are now available through both its branch network and the BOV Internet Banking channel, according to a press statement by the bank.

“BOV Internet Banking users can avail themselves of this service in the normal manner except for those few instances where customers would want to process payments to non-SEPA countries on the same day with that same day’s value date. This will be reinstated shortly,” the press statement says.

The bank says its operations are now “close to normal” and the bank is concentrating its efforts on processing the last few backlogs that had resulted from this incident.

The bank announced on Friday to restore 3rd party payments by the beginning of the week.

On 13 February, BOV shut down services after they learnt that the bank’s systems had been compromised in a cyberattack that falsified transfers valued at €13m. The bank restored some services on 14 February morning.

By 18 February BOV restored SEPA payment services. At the same time, news reports suggested the sources of the attack were unknown, and it was difficult to say when the funds would be restored, and whether they could be restored in their entirety.

The incident is currently the subject of a Criminal Inquiry before the Court of Magistrates of Malta, the BOV statement says.