Singapore — DBS Bank agrees with its irate customers that this week’s prolonged digital banking outage was “unacceptable” and announced on Thursday (Nov 25) that these services were now back to “business as usual”.
Customers of DBS and POSB, which DBS owns, began sharing information on Tuesday morning (Nov 23) that they could not access their digital banking accounts.
Although DBS announced on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon that services had been “fully restored”, that hope proved premature. It all played out on social media as customers of the largest bank in Southeast Asia piled on the complaints.
On Wednesday afternoon, DBS Singapore country head Shee Tse Koon addressed the issue on social media.
“We have since been working round the clock, together with our third-party engineering providers, to fix the problem and recover our digital banking services,” he said.
“In the meantime, please be assured that your deposits and monies are safe and that you can continue with your banking needs either through our branches or through phone banking,” he added.
By Thursday (Nov 25), customers were getting even more antsy, commenting that they still could not log in.
At 9 pm on Thursday, DBS released another update on its initial Facebook post, asserting that since that morning, customer logins and transaction activities had returned to regular “business as usual” or pre-disruption levels.
Ms R Chua, a retiree, confirms she faced no difficulties with the service in the afternoon.
At 11:10 am, Edna R, told her WhatsApp chat group, “I utilised the digibanking online service to pay Singtel and SP bills. Was OK.”
It advised customers who are unable to log in or perform selected transactions to restart their devices, as this had been found to resolve the issue in certain instances.
Meanwhile, customers using internet banking services are advised to clear their browser cache before logging in again.
“Although our digital banking services have returned to normal, the inability to access an essential service over such an extended period of time is unacceptable,” said DBS.
“We will continue to monitor and review the events of this week and are taking steps to prevent future recurrences.”
“Once again, we recognise the gravity of the disruption. We apologise for the inconvenience and anxiety caused,” it added.
Now, if the disruption is truly over, the inquisition can begin. /TISG
Read related: DBS to be reprimanded & fined for ‘unacceptable’ outage? Bank assures clients their money is ‘safe’
DBS to be reprimanded & fined for ‘unacceptable’ outage? Bank assures clients their money is ‘safe’