A recent BBC program discussed the UK position when a bank customer’s account was debited even though an ATM they tried to withdraw money from did not actually issue them the cash. In that case, the customer’s bank blamed the owner of the ATM.

What is the Australian position?
Under the new ePayments Code a customer is not liable for loss caused by system or equipment malfunction and the customer’s financial institution must not try to avoid their obligations under the code on the basis that another party in a ‘shared electronic payments network’ caused the malfunction.

Financial institutions who subscribe to the Code are also not allowed to require customers to raise disputes with other parties.

Therefore the user’s bank could not ask the user to take up the dispute with the owner of the ATM.

Unless the customer knew the system was unavailable or malfunctioning, a financial institution must not deny, explicitly or implicitly, a user’s right to claim consequential damages resulting from a malfunction of a system or equipment provided by any party to a shared electronic network.