“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,” Standard Bank chief executive in personal and business banking Funeka Montjane said in a statement.
“We are investigating the root cause of the system failure. Our initial investigation has determined that the incident was caused by hardware failure,” said Montjane.
However, despite the bank claiming that technical glitches had been resolved within hours and banking services had since been reinstated, customers complained that they were still experiencing problems yesterday afternoon (1 September).
The bank was offline for almost two hours impacting banking services including ATM functionality, debit and credit card purchases, internet banking and telephone and app services.
Montjane assured customers that every action was being taken to avoid a repeat of the incident.
Frustrated Standard Bank customers took to social networks to complain.
Responding to the bank’s Facebook post stating the problem had been fixed, Lauren Clack commented: “Nope, problem is NOT resolved.”
Jason Elrick commented: “NO THEY HAVE NOT BEEN RESTORED. I was turned away from the V&A Waterfront branch at 15.15 being told the systems were still down. How can the statement that the service has been restored 2 hours ago but the branch can’t take business at 15 minutes before close time?”
Lydia Orsmond commented: “Thanks Standard Bank! At the till at Woolworths, full trolley – and my debit card and credit card were declined! Eventually all the Standard Bank customers went to the nearby ATM to draw cash to pay for our groceries – and none of the ATMs were working…waste of time, embarrassing and VERY inconvenient! I am not a happy client.”
