HDFC Bank netbanking outage attracts customer outrage, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Private lender HDFC Bank’s netbanking and mobile banking platforms suffered an outage on Tuesday, leading to customers of the bank complaining on various social media platforms. The outage comes amidst the lender being under scrutiny of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for repeated digital outages, for which the regulator had barred HDFC Bank from the issuance of new credit cards as well as digital business activities.

HDFC Bank in a tweet confirmed the outage, saying “Some customers are facing intermittent issues accessing our NetBanking/MobileBanking App. We are looking into it on priority for resolution,” The lender further added “We apologize for the inconvenience and request you to try again after sometime. Thank you.”

Customers of the bank expressed their anguish with the outage on the lender’s platforms through various social media posts.

The RBI had in December asked HDFC Bank to stop all digital launches, as well as source new credit card customers. The order came in light of numerous outages across the lender’s electronic banking services, for which the regulator had asked the management to examine lapses. Between 2018 and 2020, HDFC Bank suffered three outages across its platforms, with the most recent outage, attributed to a power outage at the lender’s primary data centre, taking place in November 2020.

HDFC Bank in February 2021 had submitted a plan to the RBI to stop its glitches across its technology platforms, according to a report by The Economic Times (ET). The plan included various short term and long term measures – which would take upto three months to implement.