Thousands of bank customers across Australia were unable to access their accounts after a mass outage on Thursday.
The nation’s big four banks – Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Westpac and NAB – were all affected, along with smaller financial institutions such as St George, Bank of Melbourne, Macquarie Bank and Bank SA.
The outages were not limited to financial institutions and also appeared to be affecting major airline Virgin Australia and Australia Post.
Tweet from @VirginAustralia
Customers reported being unable to use internet banking, mobile banking, as well as some ATMs and cards, from about 2.10pm, according to Down Detector.
Shortly after 3pm (AEST), Commonwealth Bank tweeted that it was aware some customers were “experiencing difficulties accessing our services and we’re urgently investigating”.
“We apologise and thanks for your patience, we’ll provide an update soon,” it said.
Tweet from @CommBank
But customers were outraged, with one person replying to the bank’s tweet demanding “compensation” after being unable to pay for fuel.
Tweet from @JessiePratt1994
ANZ acknowledged a similar issue and said “at this stage we do not have an ETA for a fix, please try logging on after an hour”.
There were also outages being experienced across the ditch, with 1News New Zealand reporting customers were unable to access online banking services.
Tweet from @1NewsNZ
The Reserve Bank was also experiencing technical issues, with its website displaying an error message, but was soon back online.
Some on social media speculated the banks may have been victim to a cyber attack, with ABC reporter Rhett Burnie tweeting: “This suspected cyber attack on Australia’s banks is unfolding as we speak.”
One Twitter user replied to an apology notice from Westpac Bank, writing “at least you’ll be able to afford the hackers’ ransom demand.”
Tweet from @ratbaits
Meanwhile, others suggested the issue may have had something to do with the National Broadband Network.
Tweet from @Credfin_au
But The New Daily has not yet confirmed the cause of the mass outage.
-more to come
