First National Bank's online service is experiencing problems, leaving many customers frustrated as financial responsibilities had be dealt with at month-end.
By mid-morning, FNB online chief executive officer Lee-Anne van Zyl confirmed the core system was operating at normal speed, with online banking services restored. The service was then disrupted again later on.
Van Zyl says the problem was caused by the bank's core systems responding slower than normal. "We moved into our backup system to isolate the problem. The online banking site should function as normal."
Online banking was responding slower than normal while the bank tended to the problem. "It is month-end and there is a lot more traffic, but the service is not down, the problem was only intermittent," says Van Zyl.
This is, however, not the first time that probems with the bank's online services have let customers down. In March last year, a system-wide failure affected not only its online banking site, but also ATMs, as well as credit card terminals.
As the latest service downtime spread over salary payday for many, FNB customers again took their grievances online to Twitter, targeting the bank's media persona @RBJacobs (FNB Guy), as well as CEO Michael Jordaan.
Feeling that it would not be fair to revert back to previous incidents of system failure, Van Zyl says they constantly monitor the Web site and online banking to check for any glitches in the system. "As soon as we become aware of any problems - be it due to power failures, cable problems or electricity - we identify and deal with it immediately," she explains.
She also admits it is a frustrating problem for both the bank and the customer. "We don't want that. We need to make sure that the speed of the online banking site is satisfactory to all of our customers."
At the time of publishing, the e-banking service was up and running again.
Share