CBA’s reputation as the country’s leading provider of digital banking services is teetering as customers report a surge in outages and technical problems with the bank’s platforms.
In the 41 days since the start of April, customers have reported problems using the bank’s mobile and internet banking services on 13 days, according to the internet customer monitoring site, Down Detector.
In the first 11 days of May there have been four service incidents with CBA’s digital systems, each lasting an average of three hours.
The latest incident occurred on Tuesday (11 May), with the bank confirming that it was unable to execute instant payments through PayID.
In a pop-up notification to mobile and internet banking users, CBA advised it was taking up to three days to process PayID payments.
The PayID problem persisted throughout Tuesday afternoon and had not been resolved as Banking Day went into production after 6pm Melbourne time.
There appears to be an ongoing problem with PayID at CBA, with customers reporting delays on payments on social media platforms throughout March and April.
Customers reported service problems using mobile apps for at least three hours on the 4th and 8th of May.
Those malfunctions were preceded by a major meltdown on 26 April that forced mobile wallet users to converge on ATMs and branches to obtain cash.
The major outage resulted in chaos at petrol stations and retail outlets across the country after CBA wallet users were marooned at checkout counters.
CBA has topped digital banking surveys for the last four years, including the quarterly Forrester Research rankings that are driven exclusively by customer feedback.
Given the faltering recent performance of its systems and the comparative stability of rival platforms operated by Westpac and NAB, CBA seems bound to be marked down in next Forrester survey.
NAB customers are yet to report any incidents to Down Detector in May and advised of two minor service outages in April of short duration (less than an hour).
The technical problems now plaguing CBA channels also come at a sensitive moment for the bank as it tries to accelerate its branch rationalisation program.
Since the start of March the bank shuttered branches across the country including Merbein and Rainbow in regional Victoria, Finley and Molong in NSW, and Renmark in SA.
There is speculation the bank this week embarked on a cull of its Tasmanian network.
The politics of branch closures could get ugly for the bank unless it can stabilise the provision of digital banking services for customers.
The Reserve Bank signalled last year that it would begin publishing official data on the frequency and duration of online banking outages at Australian banks.
Since the pandemic hit Australia in March 2020, the central bank has not clarified when publication of the information would commence.