Several Belgian customers of BNP Paribas Fortis were left alarmed on Wednesday after spotting unexplained bank transfers on their accounts, with some waking up to balances suddenly in the negative.
According to Le Soir, Customers reported suspicious debits linked to retailers they had not used for years. "My account was in the red," one woman told RTL, after €66 was deducted for a transaction labelled as Vinted, despite her having made no recent purchase. Like many others, she contacted her bank to flag the discrepancy.
BNP Paribas Fortis later confirmed the issue, describing it as a technical error rather than fraud. "We want to reassure customers that all duplicated debits will be fully reimbursed today," said bank spokesperson Valéry Halloy.
According to the bank, several Visa Debit card transactions from 2023, 2024 and 2025 were mistakenly reprocessed with incorrect value dates.
Customers do not need to take any action to receive refunds, the bank said.
The problem was traced back to Monext, a French payments company. The incident affected around 100 banks across 30 European countries. In Belgium alone, 12 banks were impacted.
While the episode caused brief panic and added to customers' financial woes, BNP Paribas said the situation was under control and urged clients simply to check that the corrected amounts had been credited back to their accounts.
