Standard Bank customers not being served

Standard Bank left many clients unhappy and dissatisfied country-wide this morning when they were unable to conduct banking or pay for items at till points.

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At around 11am today, Standard Bank issued statements on their Twitter and Facebook accounts to say they were having technical difficulties and were trying to sort out the problem. By then, however, clients were extremely irritated at having their cards rejected at till points. The problem was compounded by the fact that it is month end and clients have bills to pay. Many say they are going to switch banks as this allegedly happens quite often. Standard bank then issued another statement at around 12.13pm. “We apologise for all the technical difficulties that our clients experienced this morning. We confirm, our services are back up and working.”

Many clients responded that most of their services are still not working an hour after the statement was released.

Troy Barret tweeted a reply on their statement saying, “No, you guys are still offline, don’t put tweets up if you are not sure.”

Other users also say that neither the internet banking nor the mobile banking is working.

After many of these complaints, Standard Bank tweeted again and said, “Apologies for the technical difficulties experienced this morning. Banking services have been restored and our banking apps will be up soon.”

A shop owner confirmed that they have had a problem with clients trying to pay with their bank cards.

On realizing there was a problem, some of the customers paid cash but others could not and left their items.

Standard Bank issued a release apologising to customers who experienced any disruption of their services.

“We would like to reassure our customers that their overall experience with Standard Bank and the services we offer remains our top priority and we regret any inconvenience caused,” says Funeka Montjane, Standard Bank’s Chief Executive of Personal and Business Banking. Services that were impacted by the disruption included ATM functionality, debit and credit card purchases, Internet Banking as well as telephone and APP services. The initial investigation has determined that the incident was cause by hardware failure. Every action is being taken to avoid the incident repeating itself. “Standard Bank takes this matter very seriously as it is important that our customers are able to access all of our services seamlessly and without fail 24/7. We will be monitoring the system closely,” says Montjane. Should any customer experience further problems or have any related queries they are encouraged to contact Standard Bank’s call centre on 0860 123 000