Maybank2U's (almost useless) TAC request

[This is a brief update dated 29 Nov 2013: I've been noticing that this post of mine does receive some viewing occasionally. It was written way back in April 2010. Connectivity conditions have improved considerably. Getting a response to the Maybank TAC requests are now much faster. So if anyone still wants to read the rest of this story, please go ahead. Just bear in mind that everything I wrote about is now rather old news. Thank you.]

For a long time already, banks here in Malaysia have instituted a security measure known as TAC.

This acronym stands for Transaction Authorisation Code, a security code that is sent to a user's mobile by SMS whenever an online transaction is attempted.

TAC provides a second layer of identity authentication before a person is allowed to do specific online transactions. If a TAC is not requested or if the TAC is not keyed in (or wrongly keyed) into the online field, the transaction stops there.

Maybank, of course, is one of these banks employing this security measure. For a long time, for perhaps two years already, I've been trying to avoid using Maybank for online transactions. Not that I'm not confident about the security of their system. No, it's because I'm so fed up with the tardiness of their system. Two years on, and Maybank still haven't improved on it.

Just this morning, I thought that, well, let me give the bank a chance to see whether their services have improved. So after logging into Maybank2U, I tried a transaction and requested for a TAC at 10.27am.

I waited....

And waited....

And waited still some more....

Boy, do I have the patience to wait. A real sucker, aren't I?

If after a while the user does not log out from Maybank2U, their system will warn him that they would log him out in 30 seconds. Three such messages appeared on my laptop and three times, I had to click and tell them to continue with my session.

And finally, at 10.41am, the TAC notification came in by SMS to my mobile. That's a 14-minute wait to complete a TAC notification. And that is completely unacceptable for a huge bank like Maybank. It's supposedly Malaysia's premier bank and yet, their TAC service is shitty and inefficient. Nothing has changed in this respect in the past two years.....