Access Bank Is Not Shutting Down and the People Behind the Rumour May Face Criminal Charges

If a message landed in your WhatsApp this week telling you that Access Bank was shutting down on September 23 2026 and urging you to close your account and withdraw your funds immediately, you were not alone in receiving it, and you were right to be suspicious.

Access Bank Plc has dismissed as false a purported shutdown notice circulating on social media and WhatsApp, reassuring customers, investors and other stakeholders that the bank remains financially strong and fully operational,  describing the viral message as a fabrication that falsely impersonated its official communication channels and was designed with a single purpose: to cause panic and disrupt business activities.

Access Holdings confirmed in a formal statement addressed to the Nigerian Exchange Limited, its shareholders and the investing public that the publication was entirely fabricated and was neither issued nor authorised by Access Holdings or Access Bank, and that there has been no change to the operations or financial condition of either entity.

The fake notice claimed, in language designed to sound like an official internal announcement, that Access Bank had completed a strategic review and decided to cease banking operations, effective September 23 2026, advising customers to withdraw their funds while assuring them their money remained safe during the supposed transition, a framing calculated to trigger exactly the kind of anxious response that financial misinformation depends on.

LinkGuard’s investigation confirmed the claim is false, with Access Bank officially denying it and confirming the bank remains financially strong and fully operational.

The matter has been referred to regulatory, security and law enforcement authorities, and steps are being taken to identify and prosecute those responsible for creating and spreading the false post, and the bank’s warning to whoever originated the notice is worth taking seriously, because publishing false information capable of causing panic or undermining confidence in financial institutions may constitute an offence under Nigeria’s Cybercrimes legislation, a framework that treats threats to financial system stability with the same seriousness as other cybercrime offences.

Access Bank is one of Nigeria’s largest commercial banks with operations across Africa and beyond, which is precisely what makes it a target for this kind of misinformation, because a rumour about a smaller institution travels less far and causes less damage, while a fake notice about a systemically important bank with millions of customers can move through WhatsApp groups and Facebook timelines at a speed that outpaces any official denial and leaves real financial anxiety in its wake even after the facts are established.

The bank stressed that all its operations across subsidiaries remain unaffected while customer services continue to run seamlessly, adding that customers should rely only on information from Access Bank’s verified communication channels and avoid sharing unverified messages.

The advice extends beyond Access Bank to how Nigerians engage with financial information generally, because this is not the first time a major Nigerian financial institution has had to fight a false shutdown rumor on social media and it will not be the last, and the pattern of these rumors, official-looking language, urgent tone, specific dates and instructions to withdraw funds immediately, is consistent enough that recognizing it should now be a basic financial literacy skill.

If it arrives on WhatsApp urging you to move your money immediately, verify it through the institution’s official channels before doing anything else. Every time.

Your money is safest when it is on a platform you can verify and trust. Monica is SEC-compliant, transparent and built on the foundation that financial trust is earned, not assumed.

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