Westpac apologise for taking ‘too long’ to restore services after banking outage

Westpac have restored services for customers after an outage overnight that left customers unable to access their accounts.

The major bank apologised and said it took “too long” to resolve the outage after customers reported their accounts vanishing or balances displaying zero from about 9pm Monday.

After posting an update just before midnight stating mobile and online banking remained unavailable following a “technology update” earlier in the evening, another notice was posted about 5.30am advising there had been a fix.

“We want to apologise to all our customers who were impacted by the issue overnight. We recognise this took too long to resolve and we thank customers for their patience,” Westpac posted to social media.

The “big four” bank did not indicate if there would be any compensation for customers impacted.

The financial institution was criticised for not contacting customers via SMS or email to report the access issue.

Downdetector reported more than 10,000 customers without access at 9pm, with the number steadily dropping over the next few hours. The majority were related to online banking.

Customers vented their frustration with not being able to pay wages or “buy food”, others speculating whether the outage was actually a hack.

“Some of us need to fill up our cars, buy groceries, pay bills,” one said.

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One woman said she got caught at Woolworths and couldn’t pay for her groceries, while another was without funds after filling up their car with petrol at a service station.

Just like during the Optus outage, people were quick to point out that Australia was not ready to make a transition to a cashless society.

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