The city-based bank ostensibly has a system outage in the third such incident of its kind in the last 18 months.
Singapore has become renowned around the world for its high pace of digitalization in the financial sector, and a thriving fintech and crypto industry, with conventions attracting participants from around the world.
Well, the next time one comes around, it might be an idea for DBS to go, raise a hand, and ask for some help related to its in-house digital services, as they seem to be increasingly prone to outages. As an example, earlier today users of DBS PayLah!, the digital payment app of DBS Bank, were unable to log in to the app or make payments at around noon on Friday, 5 May 2023, according to The Business Times.
Meanwhile, certain customers found issues with using the Nets contactless payment system and credit cards to complete transactions. Downdetector, an outage tracker, received more than 2,600 user reports indicating that users had issues accessing DBS’ online services starting at around 12.53 pm on Friday.
Return to Normal
The trouble seems to extend to DBS and POSB digibank online and mobile, as well as its DBS Vickers mTrading, DBS PayLah! and ATM services, according to the bank’s spokesperson. However, the digital system as well as most of its ATMs resumed normal operations at 1.30 pm on Friday.
«Our systems are uncompromised, and your monies and deposits remain safe,» the spokesperson said. Still, today's incident may prompt another discussion in parliament in a similar fashion to the last one, not least given there have been three in the last 18 months.
Comprehensive Assessment
As a result, DBS has engaged independent experts to undertake a comprehensive assessment of its digital resilience at the prompting of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) after the last incident in March.
At this point, it remains to be seen what the findings are and whether they will face additional censure as, clearly, identifying root causes and mitigating the gaps isn't cutting it anymore. But, for that, we will have to wait until the report is released in July.
