An outage at Westpac means that the app and online banking no longer work for Australians
A major technical glitch at Westpac has left thousands of Australians no longer able to access their money through the app or online banking.
Due to the problem, more than 7,000 complaints were reported on the technical monitoring site Downdetector on Monday afternoon.
Westpac has acknowledged the issue and is actively working to resolve it.
“We are aware that customers are experiencing difficulties accessing online and mobile banking,” the bank said in a statement.
“Our teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.’
Many Australians have reported being unable to access their money due to the problem.
‘It happened right when everyone was going to lunch. “I had to transfer money because I was filtering everything through my main account, but I couldn’t make the transfer so I couldn’t get lunch,” one person said.
Another said the problem stopped her from getting Oasis tickets.
A major technical glitch at Westpac has left its app and online banking out of order for thousands of Australians, leaving them without access to their money
Westpac said it was working to resolve the issue
‘Pre-booked the tickets – went to my Westpac app to get my credit card details… wrong… wrong… wrong. Not happy.’
“I’m stuck at the gas station and I can’t pay, please hurry,” a third added.
The outage comes just days after the bank ended cardless cash withdrawals, requiring customers to use a physical bank card to withdraw money from an ATM.
“As part of the ongoing review of our products and services, Westpac will no longer offer the cardless cash withdrawal feature,” Westpac announced.
The bank claimed the change was part of an ongoing review of its ‘products and services’.
It highlighted that customers can still withdraw cash from Westpac ATMs across Australia as long as they use their physical card, and cash transactions can also be made 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, so cardless cash is really my only option when I need cash unexpectedly. It seems like a step backwards,” one person wrote.
Westpac has announced it is shutting down its cardless cash withdrawal service
An Australian, who claimed to work at Westpac, explained that the service had been removed due to an “insanely high” number of fraud and scam incidents.
‘I work for Westpac at branch level and the reason we removed them is because the number of fraud and scam incidents that occurred using this capability was insanely high. Like 1000 in the last month,” they claimed.
‘Moreover, there are actually only about 4,000 cardless cash withdrawals per week nationally, which is a drop in the ocean for the total number of bank transactions.
‘It’s just too much hassle to have to administer fraud and scams at branch level and too many people who abuse other people’s internet banking to get the SMS code to withdraw money.’
