A major technology outage at Westpac has left thousands of Australians unable to access their money through the app or online banking.
More than 7,000 complaints were reported on technology monitoring site Downdetector on Monday afternoon due to the issue.
Westpac has acknowledged the issue and is actively working to fix it.
“We are aware that customers are experiencing issues accessing online and mobile banking,” the bank said in a statement.
‘Our teams are working to solve the problem. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.’
Many Australians have reported that they are unable to access their money due to the problem.
‘It happened just when everyone was going to lunch. I needed to transfer money because I filter everything through my main account, but I couldn’t make the transfer and therefore I couldn’t have lunch,” said one.
Another said the problem had prevented her from getting Oasis tickets.
‘I had the tickets reserved; I went to my Westpac app to get my credit card details…error…error…error. Not happy.’
The outage comes just days after the bank ended cardless cash withdrawals, forcing customers to use a physical bank card to withdraw money from an ATM.
A major Westpac technology outage has caused the app and online banking to stop working for thousands of Australians, leaving them unable to access their money.
Westpac said it was working to resolve the issue.
“As part of the ongoing review of our products and services, Westpac will no longer offer cardless cash withdrawal functionality,” Westpac announced.
The bank said the change was part of an ongoing review of its “products and services.”
It highlighted that customers will still be able to make cash withdrawals at Westpac ATMs across Australia as long as they use their physical card, and cash transactions will also be possible at branches across the country.
Westpac confirmed that cardless cash deposits would still be available to customers.
Customers were furious about the change, with many claiming that ending cardless cash withdrawals “seemed like a step backwards”.
‘Like many people, I no longer carry a physical card with me, so cardless cash is really my only option if I need cash unexpectedly. Seems like a step backwards,” one person wrote.
Westpac has announced it will close its cardless cash withdrawal service
An Australian, who claimed to work at Westpac, explained that the service was removed due to an “incredibly high” number of incidents of fraud and scams.
‘I work for Westpac at branch level and the reason we removed them is because the number of fraud and scam incidents occurring in this capacity was incredibly high. Like 1,000 in the last month,’ they stated.
‘Furthermore, there are actually only around 4,000 cardless cash withdrawals per week nationally, which is a drop in the ocean for overall branch transactions.
“It’s too annoying to manage at branch level with frauds and scams and too many people exploiting other people’s internet banking to get the SMS code to withdraw money.”