Some Westpac customers in New Zealand were reporting issues paying with their eftpos cards last night, or found their account balance showed zero dollars.
The bank posted on social media that it was aware some people were “experiencing issues” with “some card services” as well as with online banking.
It apologised and said it was working on a fix as soon as possible.
A Downdetector graph showing the Westpac outages reported in the 24 hours from February 9 to February 10.
A Westpac NZ spokesperson said in a statement: “We’re experiencing an issue in which a small subset of customers are unable to access Westpac One online banking or card services.
“We’re aware of the issue and teams are actively working on a fix. We apologise to any impacted customers.”
One man, who did not wish to be named, said he just landed from Australia and he and his wife’s debit cards had been declined when they tried to use them at the airport.
He said he got a “hell of a shock” when he opened his online banking and it showed all his accounts having $0.
He thought his money had been stolen somehow but he called the bank and was told there was a technical problem and they were working on it.
He said he was told a fix could be an hour or as late as this morning (Saturday) and that “everyone was working on it”.
Another woman came home in tears from a dinner out after having all her cards declined.
There were numerous comments on Westpac’s Facebook page sharing similar experiences.
Replying to the comments, the bank said it was really sorry.
“It’s not fraud, it’s a technical issue in which people’s accounts are showing as zero balance.
“We’re working hard to fix this. Sorry again!”
More than 12 hours later, the bank’s Facebook posts wishing customers a happy Lunar New Year were pulled after comments criticising the bank’s lack of updates on the problems affecting customers.
Shortly before 8am, the bank advised the situation had been resolved and apologised to all affected customers.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the bank said they apologise to the customers who were affected.
“Our tech teams implemented a fix overnight and all accounts were restored and are back functioning as normal. Work is underway to identify and remediate any residual issues,” they said.
One customer, who did not want to be named, said they were unimpressed by the bank’s response to the fault.
The customer said it took three attempts to speak to a bank representative when duplicate transactions started appearing on their account on Friday.
