OCBC digital banking services disrupted; bank working to resolve ‘intermittent technical issues’

SINGAPORE: Some customers were unable to access OCBC’s digital banking services or use its PayNow platform on Tuesday (Nov 7), with the bank citing “intermittent technical issues”.

In a Facebook post at about 1.40pm, the bank wrote: “We are experiencing intermittent technical issues with the funds transfer service offered via the OCBC digital app and internet banking.

“If you need to make an urgent transfer, please consider using other modes of payment such as credit cards and/or NETs. We are working hard to resolve this issue (as soon as possible), sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

An error message on its app said customers “may have difficulty accessing our banking and payment services”. 

CNA has contacted OCBC for more information.

For some users who attempted to make a PayNow transfer, they were unable to select a recipient to proceed with the payment with a notification saying that their chosen contact was not registered with the service. 

“OCBC digital banking seems to be down again? Can’t open the app and Pay Anyone now decommissioned,” said Facebook user Joe Sin, in reference to the bank’s recently discontinued standalone payments app.

Facebook user Gary Liew said the SMS one-time passcode (OTP) was not working for him while Reddit user SlaySlavery also encountered an issue with transferring money. 

The lunchtime service disruption on Tuesday was the latest in a string of separate digital banking incidents or service outages this year. 

Connectivity issues caused NETS-related services to go down briefly on Nov 3, with some users having problems with their payments not reflecting or being charged multiple times.

DBS and Citibank were hit by an hours-long outage on Oct 14, affecting online banking and payment services. It was said in parliament that these disruptions prevented about 2.5 million payment and ATM transactions from being completed. 

DBS itself has suffered multiple service disruptions this year, with a day-long service outage in March and digital banking services and ATMs also going down in May. 

OCBC suffered a morning outage on Aug 28 due to a “technical problem”. The affected services included its internet and mobile banking platforms, PayNow, ATMs, cards and Velocity, the bank’s digital business banking platform