After being down for several hours, DBS and POSB internet banking and payment services were restored on Thursday (May 2). The bank announced that digibank online and mobile services returned to normal at 7.37 pm and 7.41 pm, respectively, while DBS PayLah! services were restored at 8.03 pm.
The bank had acknowledged the issue at 6.54 pm, about an hour after it was first reported by users. DBS assured its customers that their monies and deposits remained safe and that they could continue to use their DBS/POSB credit or debit cards to make payments. Customers were also advised to use the nearest ATMs.
DBS Wealth clients could contact their relationship managers to place trades, while Vickers and mTrading customers were advised to contact the Vickers hotline at 63272288 for assistance.
The outage caused inconvenience to many users, who took to the bank’s latest Facebook post to express their frustration. Users reported being unable to access services on the DBS’ mobile app and website platforms. Some users could log in but could not make any transfer, while others were unable to pay for food or drinks during dinner time.
The latest disruption comes two days after the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that it would not seek to extend the six-month pause on the bank’s non-essential activities. MAS had imposed a multiplier of 1.8 times for DBS’ risk-weighted assets for operational risk until the bank “has demonstrated the ability to maintain service availability and reliability, and handle any disruptions effectively”.
However, MAS noted that DBS has made “substantive progress” to address the shortcomings identified from the service disruptions last year. MAS will closely monitor the bank’s progress and the effectiveness of the measures. In the event of service disruptions, MAS expects DBS to promptly recover its services and communicate to its customers in a clear and timely manner.
DBS said that being able to resume its activities “will not dilute its focus on strengthening technology resiliency and enhancing digital service availability”. The bank has taken measures to ensure that such an outage does not occur in the future, and its customers can be assured of the safety and security of their funds.