If you’re experiencing service outages with your bank right now, you’re not the only one. Several major financial institutions, including Commonwealth Bank and ANZ are all currently dealing with service problems.
It also seems to have impacted some airlines and Post Offices.
According to sources, the issue sits with Akamai — a CDN service provider that specialises in content delivery and cyber security. It is also our understanding that this issue is impacting service internationally as well as in Australia.
At the present time no institution will confirm on the record that Akamai is responsible for the outages. However, ANZ has said that its outage was due to an external provider.
“An incident related to an external provider affected ANZ services earlier today. The incident impacted connectivity with ANZ’s core services, including ANZ app and Internet Banking. Connectivity was restored quickly and the most impacted services are back online,” an ANZ spokesperson said to Gizmodo Australia over email.
Gizmodo has reached out to Akamai for comment.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it sounds like an extremely similar situation to just last week many of the biggest sites on the internet went down, including major news sites as well as Pinterest and Reddit. This was due to an outage at Fastly — a cloud computing company that provides CDN services to these sites.
Customers took to social media to report the issues and vent their frustration on Thursday. It appears that it’s not just online services that were impacted, but also the ability for some people to even use payment systems.
“Sitting at the supermarket unable to pay for my groceries or access my accounts. Absolutely furious,” one user said on the Down Detector page for Commonwealth Bank.
Others reported that the Commbank app and website weren’t currently working. Gizmodo Australia has tried accessing the CommBank app and website and wasn’t able to at the time of writing.
But it isn’t the only financial institution that was hit. On Thursday afternoon Down Detector was a sea of upticks in service disruptions that seem to have begun after 2pm AEST:
“ANZ app is down. Can’t even log in and it says, ‘Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later. If you need help, give us a call anytime,’” another user said on Down Detector.
Hi Jerry, we’re sorry to hear you’re having issues. We’re investigating this as a high priority and apologise for the inconvenience caused. ^Sandra
— CommBank (@CommBank) June 17, 2021
“We understand some of our customers are currently experiencing difficulties accessing our services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and are investigating this as a priority,” a CBA spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo Australia.
It has also issued a statement on social media.
“We’re aware some of you are experiencing difficulties accessing our services and we’re urgently investigating. We apologise and thanks for your patience, we’ll provide an update soon,” CommBank tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
Fortunately services didn’t seem to be down for more than a few hours.
CommBank and ANZ spokespeople have confirmed to Gizmodo that services are back up and running. Down detector has also seen a decline in reported problems across most impacted Australian financial institutions.
“We are starting to see services return following a tech outage which had wide spread impact across businesses. We thank customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience caused,” a CBA spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo Australia.
So fingers crossed everything is up and running for all customers now.
This story is updating…