Beem It - the instant payments platform owned by three of the major banks - suffered a meltdown over the weekend that took more than 24 hours to fix.The service was shut down yesterday afternoon after irate customers announced on social media that they had not received payments that were forwarded to their bank accounts over the weekend.The company appears to have reacted slowly to the public concerns raised on Monday morning by customers and did not close the underperforming service until around 3pm.Beem It did not disclose how many customers' transactions were delayed or otherwise affected by its malfunctioning systems.The company's media representative also declined to answer written questions put by Banking Day about the operational breakdown, saying in an email the company had "nothing to add" beyond the following statement:"Beem It is currently down as we're experiencing some issues with our payment system," the company spokesperson said. "The team are currently working on a resolve and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused."The company told customers via Facebook that the service had been restored at around 7pm last night.Customer posts made on social media indicate that customers from ME Bank and ING were among those affected by the operational failure.While outages are a major risk for any payments company, they are magnified for providers such as Beem It with customer propositions hitched to their ability to execute payments instantly.The company, which is owned by CBA, NAB and Westpac, is promising to deliver "better money moments" to customers through its mobile payments platform.The processing delays come at an awkward moment for the business as it tries to raise public awareness of the value of instant payments among Australians through a national television advertising campaign.In the first week of May the company's chief executive Mark Wood issued a written apology to customers after it revealed the email addresses of its entire customer base in an email it sent to users.That privacy breach affected customers using the email domain of the Reserve Bank of Australia.