By SINGAPORE — The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued a statement regarding the recent disruption of digital services by DBS on Wednesday (29 Mar), saying that it is unacceptable and that it will take the commensurate supervisory actions after assessing the facts.
The Singapore financial regulator shared that DBS notified the agency early on Wednesday morning that its customers were experiencing difficulties logging on to its digital banking services.
The outage lasted most of the day and only came back online in the evening.
DBS customers had been unable to log in to online banking platforms such as the PayLah! mobile wallet, with reports of service outages beginning to surge at about 8.30 am, according to the website Downdetector.
At 4.50 pm, with services still unavailable, DBS announced a two-hour extension for the opening hours at all DBS and POSB branches, as well as Treasures Centres.
In its statement on Wednesday, MAS said that it has been in close contact with DBS to expedite the recovery of its digital services and to ensure timely communications to customers on the disruption.
MAS said that it takes the reliability of banks’ critical IT systems seriously and added that the disruption of DBS’ digital services is unacceptable.
The bank’s recent service disruption comes a year after a similar incident in November 2021.
MAS said that DBS has fallen short of MAS’ expectations to maintain high system availability and ensure its IT systems are recovered expeditiously.
MAS has instructed DBS to conduct a thorough investigation to find out the root cause of the disruption and submit its investigation findings to MAS.
It will take commensurate supervisory actions against DBS after gathering the necessary facts.
DBS apologized for the inconvenience caused and said in a Facebook post that it was doing its best to resolve the situation.
The bank assured customers that their deposits and money were safe and secure, and they could continue to use their DBS/POSB cards for transactions.
In a 7.30 pm update, the bank said that as of 5.45 pm, its digital services – digibank Mobile and Online, PayLah! and mTrading – had returned to normal.