ITEM

FEEDBACK

Description

Our system processes multiple payment files for clients who transmit single payment files using the NEFT/NAPS payment mode on NIBSSPay+

Date

23rd April 2020 to 15th July 2020

Status
  • Decommissioned the webservice for NIBSSPay+ version1.
  • Migrated the application and database to a more recent and separate server environment.
  • Deployed a stopgap failsafe fix that would prevent duplicate transactions from being submitted for a single upload file.
  • Designed a daily reconciliation process to identify duplicate NAPS payment files.
  • Commenced recovery of 6,459,553,200.02 transferred multiple times. Recovered 95.33% (N6,157,940,147.73) with an exposure of N302,132,751.51.

Root Cause

The error stems from the architecture of the NPP application which occurs when Requests received are assigned a batch ID from the database and transaction forwarded to the payment mode of choice (NAPS or NEFT). 

Upon transmission to NAPS or NEFT, the file details and status are to be written to the database. Occasionally, failures to connect to the database can occur causing the writing process to fail.

This failure (writing to the database) causes the application to repeatedly attempt the process until successful, thereby issuing another and sometimes multiple Batch IDs, as well as forwarding the same to NAPS or NEFT. This leads to cases of duplicate transactions being processed. 

Actions to Forestall Recurrence 

The NIBSSPay/NAPS service was turned off between 9th to 17th of July 2020.

Impact
  • Clients with NAPS payment files in progress will not receive feedback. 
  • Newly initiated NAPS requests will remain on “payment in progress” status until the service is restored.

Interim Resolution 
  • Profiling of clients to use the NEFT payment mode.
  • Manual processing of files for clients with an exceptional request.
  • Cancellation of files for clients whose requests have not gotten to the NAPS platform. This will enable them to re-initiate using the NEFT payment mode.
  • Manual generation of the report from the NAPS platform for clients whose NAPS request got to the NAPS platform before the service was turned off.

Recommendations
  1. Deploy a stopgap failsafe fix that would prevent duplicate transactions from being submitted for a single upload file.     This is awaiting change management approval and will be tested on the staging environment before it is finally deployed to the production environment. -This has been implemented and deployed
  2. Add constraints on the HAWK DB (Amount, Narration Serial Number, and ID) to provide a second level measure to avoid duplication. - This has been implemented on HAWK DB.
  3. Fix the transaction session management that causes missing transaction on the portal. - This has been implemented and deployed.
  4. Increase the maximum number of pool connections on the DB to ensure that connection threads are available. this has been implemented. – This has been implemented on the production database.
  5. Update the application to close out DB connection when exiting a process. - This will be implemented on the NIBSSPay+ rebuild.
  6. Design a process to reconcile payments made using the NAPS payment mode on NIBSSPay+. – This has been implemented.
  7. Follow-up on Banks/Clients for recovery of outstanding exposure. - This is ongoing.