Big four bank Westpac says its second outage in 24 hours has now been fixed, with customers again able to access their money through digital channels.
“Our online and mobile banking services have now been restored,” Westpac said in an update about 4pm AEDT on Tuesday.
“We apologise for the disruption this afternoon and thank you for your patience during this time.”
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The bank has not responded to questions from 7NEWS.com.au about the cause of its latest problem and if it was linked to similar outages on Monday.
Westpac subsidiaries including St George Bank, Bank of Melbourne and Bank SA also reported issues but used a similar statement to inform customers that services “have now been restored”.
Report to Down Detector spiked about 2pm on Tuesday, with 3450 complaints, and Westpac told customers via social media it was “experiencing issues”.
“We’re aware that customers are experiencing issues accessing online and mobile banking,” Westpac said on X, formerly Twitter.
“Our teams are working to fix the issue.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience and will continue to share updates here.”
Customers locked out of their accounts for a second time in 24 hours were furious.
“Westpac, do you have any updates about the outage? (I) would really like to pay my staff today. Why is it so hard for you to communicate with customers?” one customer posted on X.
Another fumed: “Online banking is down again for the second time in 24 hours … and NO, it is NOT me … It’s YOUR SYSTEM!”
Another person said “sorry for the inconvenience” simply “doesn’t do it anymore”.
“You close our bank branches, leaving us no option, shut us down online, denying us access to our money. It’s not your money. Time to put cash back under the mattress folks, this is just not good enough,” they said.
Westpac recently closed its cardless cash withdrawal feature, meaning cardless cash will no longer be available at the bank’s ATMs across Australia.
Westpac said the move was made amid a transition towards more widespread digital banking, and some theorised that making ATMs harder to use was part of a broader strategy by the bank to remove them altogether.
Recent data from the Reserve Bank suggests cash could be making a comeback, with the number of ATM withdrawals jumping 2.7 per cent to 29,438,600 in August.
