8 hours after Westpac's online banking system crashed, customers were still not able to do online banking transactions. And while the interface to the site was restored, the Westpac site was very slow to access with some customers on fast broadband connections having to wait up to 2 minutes for a single page to serve.
Click to enlarge |
| Westpac Banking interface devoid of banking capability |
At 10:15pm on Friday night customers were being given access to their accounts but when they finally got into the site all banking transactions had been disabled with only bank account records exposed.
And while Westpac Bank PR staff was trying to spin doctor the event many small employers who traditionally pay staff on a Friday found that they were unable to do account transfers due to the crash. This left many staff without cash according to several organisations that SHN spoke to.
Westpac spokesman David Lording said the bank's entire fleet of 1650 ATMs across Australia, its EFTPOS facilities as well as internet banking and some branches were affected. The systems were hit around 3pm (AEST) and were down until at least 4.30pm AEST when the bank began returning them to service.
