Singapore DBS, Citi customers can’t use online services for hours due to data centre outage

Payment services were disrupted for several hours on Saturday, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it was informed of the matter by the banks in the afternoon. Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. said its engineers verified its networks were working as normal after customers had problems accessing social media platforms and banking services.

Some of the banks’ customers who were outside Singapore said on Facebook they were unable to use credit cards issued by the lenders or carry out online transactions.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that the service disruptions were caused by an issue at a common data centre that is used by the banks,” the MAS said in a statement. “MAS has been following up closely with the banks, as they work towards a full resumption of their services, and provide timely communications and support to affected customers.”

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The latest disruption follows delays experienced by DBS customers last month in processing transactions on one of its payment services.

“Please be assured that our systems are uncompromised, and your monies and deposits remain safe,” the bank said on its Facebook page on Saturday, adding that the data centre was used by various organisations.

MAS said in March that it would take action against DBS after its second digital banking outage in less than two years.

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The regulator said then it took seriously the reliability of banks’ critical IT systems, and had asked DBS to conduct a thorough investigation and submit its findings, after its outage in March stretched for about 10 hours.

The incident was reminiscent of the outage the bank suffered in November 2021 – one of its worst digital disruptions in the past decade.

Under MAS regulations, financial institutions need to ensure that the maximum unscheduled downtime for each critical system does not exceed four hours within any period of 12 months.