This is the belief stretcher-ing moment a 96-year-old woman is wheeled into a bank on a hospital gurney when managers insisted she had to prove her identity in person.

Frail Fidelia Vasquez Nuno had to be taken to the branch in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, by ambulance after bank staff withheld her state pension for six months.

Clerks had blamed the glitch on a "biometric error" after her son Gilberto Ayala had been given legal power of attorney over her estate.

And to the astonishment of her family they insisted she had to attend in person to verify her identity after bank officials rejected documents presented by her family.

Shocking footage which went viral across Mexico shows Fedelia strapped into an ambulance gurney while a clerk from BBVA bank interrogates her from behind a desk.

Her furious son Gilberto can be seen standing protectively at her shoulder and her daughter Ernestina Ayala later described the experience as a "bureaucratic ordeal".

Ernestina said: "They've paraded us from office to office. They tell us her facial features don't match those in the previous record, without taking into account that my mother is 96 years old.

"Of course she's changed physically, who doesn’t change over the decades?"

The family has since filed complaints with Mexico's National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission for the Protection and Defence of Users of Financial Services.

Bank officials later apologised for the scandal saying in a statement: "We deeply regret the situation and apologise for any inconvenience caused."