CBA recovers systems

Commonwealth Bank weathered a day of restricted customer service across key electronic banking platforms yesterday, with the nature of the strife exaggerated in florid reporting by many media outlets.

Issues with the bank's NetBank platform on Monday night led to problems early yesterday. The first mentions on social media appeared shortly after 8am eastern time and were of an inability to make transfers.

In most cases, customers were unable to make BPay bill payments or pay anyone via money transfer. Mobile banking and telephone banking services were also affected.

The issue also affected CBA services through Australia Post shops and agencies

The bank said it caught up with delayed payments by the end of the day and had fully restored services by 5pm.

No payroll, Centrelink, direct credits or other batch-processed payments appear to have been affected last night.

Explanations vary for the cause. The bank's corporate affairs team put it down to a routine, though faulty, maintenance upgrade. The Financial Review reported that the issue was related to processing problems connected to the usual end-of-month processes.
 
The problems also affected the bank's automatic teller machine fleet, which was running in "offline" mode for most of the day. This is a routine response that allows customers to potentially withdraw cash in excess of their balance, but subject to normal withdrawal limits.

This feature morphed in media reporting in Sydney and was picked up by the specialist technology media, the national media and some international media. Reports were to the effect that CBA ATMs were oozing cash uncontrollably in some cases, with customers queuing 50-deep to enjoy the bonanza.

Suggestions of police guards at numerous ATMs also appear overblown, though the bank's corporate affairs team confirmed there were cases of customers calling the police to busy ATMs.