OCBC banking services restored after 'technical problem' caused nearly 4-hour morning outage
SINGAPORE — Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has apologised after all its banking channels were hit by a "technical problem" on Monday (Aug 28) morning which lasted nearly four hours.
In an update at about 12.20pm, an OCBC spokesperson said that all of its services have been restored, including internet and mobile banking platforms, as well as its Velocity trading channel.
Earlier, only services for ATMs, branch and card services had been recovered.
"We are investigating the cause of the technical problem and will provide an update as soon as we can. Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience caused," the spokesperson said in the statement.
The bank also sought to reassure customers that "their monies remained safe and customer data was secured throughout".
OCBC had said in a Facebook post at about 9.30am that the issue had affected mobile and online banking, PayNow, ATMs, Velocity and bank cards.
Customers who need to perform urgent banking transactions could still visit physical branches to do so, the bank said.
A statement on OCBC's website and mobile app added that the bank was experiencing "network issues" and informed customers that "all banking services are currently unavailable".
On Facebook, several users wrote that they had problems when making payments, with their cards getting declined at the register.
One user David Leong wrote that his credit card was declined twice at a merchant and he had to use other cards for payment, calling the experience "embarrassing".
Several other users also wrote that the technical problems had been happening for more than an hour before OCBC made a statement about the issue.
In a statement at around 10.45am, OCBC said that its banking channels had been hit by a technical problem at 8.33am, which affected its consumer and business banking customers.
The bank said it was on standby to deploy additional resources at branches and extend branch banking hours to support its customers.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said it is aware of the service issues faced by OCBC's customers.
"MAS is following up with the bank on the root cause of the incident and will take supervisory follow-up actions as needed,” said a MAS spokesman.
In May, MAS imposed an additional capital requirement on DBS Bank in the wake of two successive service disruptions in the space of just over a month.
