CBA Chief Pledges Better Services – As Outage Hits
Commonwealth Bank CEO Mark Comyn told the bank’s 2019 annual general meeting at Sydney’s Darling Harbour this week that the bank is taking “significant action this year to simplify our portfolio, simplify the way we operate, and put things right for our customers”.
The effect of his promise was, alas, somewhat lessened by yesterday’s major outage affecting cardless cash services.
Many Commonwealth Bank customers yesterday were unable to complete transactions after a technical issue caused cardless cash services to go down.
The error, experienced shortly after midday, affected payments in the CommBank app, Netbank, cardless cash transactions and some in-branch services. ATM and point-of-sale merchant terminals were only momentarily affected, the bank said.
However the broader issue became so widespread that some Commonwealth branches were forced to close their doors.
A 12:30pm update said: “Our ATMs and point-of-sale merchant terminals are available and working. The following services may be impacted: Payments and BPay services in CommBank app and NetBank; Cradles Cash not available; some in-branch services and some call centre services” also affected.
Still, Comyn maintained; “Whether it’s using a passbook in the largest branch network in Australia, speaking with one of our team in our six Australia-based contact centres, or banking anywhere, anytime online – with customers increasingly choosing to interact with us online – being the best in digital continues to be a key part of our strategy.
“Over the next five years, we plan to invest more than $5 billion in technology to keep improving our systems and services, to help keep our customers safe and secure, and to serve them better.”