Hello, hope you’re staying warm. Things are a little heavy on the banking side today, but let’s jump in.
1. CommBank goes down
Customers of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia had a bit of trouble yesterday with their CommBank app, with complaints flooding in throughout the day saying that people either couldn’t log in, see their balance, or transfer money. The outage started at around 8 am AEST and it wasn’t until 4 pm AEST that the bank said it was recovering.
🧵UPDATE: 4.00PM – Services are recovering following intermittent issues that some customers experienced across our banking services today. 👇
— CommBank (@CommBank) June 26, 2023
2. New banking T&Cs to thwart abuse
Staying on banking for a minute and new banking rules in place by CBA and NAB are hoping to make it clear financial abuse will not be tolerated on their respective platforms. NAB has announced a new ‘unacceptable account conduct’ condition on its savings and transaction accounts that will allow bankers to cut off customers who are perpetrating financial abuse, while CBA says it will name financial abuse as unacceptable customer behaviour in new T&Cs on a range of products. The Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) has labelled it “a significant step forward”. Elsewhere, both banks, per the AFR, are looking to add thousands of workers in India to their payroll to help with AI efforts.
3. Medibank has to set aside $250M following data breach
The Australian Prudential and Regulation Authority (APRA) announced it has taken action against Medibank Private following a review of its major cyber incident. APRA said it will impose an increase in Medibank’s capital adequacy requirement of $250 million, “reflecting weaknesses identified in Medibank’s information security environment”. “This action demonstrates how seriously APRA takes entities’ obligations in relation to cyber risk and that APRA will respond strongly to identified weaknesses in cyber security controls,” APRA member Suzanne Smith said, adding, “APRA expects Medibank to ensure there is appropriate accountability and consequence management, including impacts to executive remuneration where appropriate.”
4. High-speed internet for all Americans
U.S. President Joe Biden has announced that every household in the country would have access by 2030 to high-speed internet, using cables made in the U.S., of course. Per the AP, he declared high-speed internet was no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity”, announcing that more than $US40 billion would be distributed across the country to deliver high-speed internet in places where there’s either no service or service is too slow. “But it’s not enough to have access — you need affordability and access,” the president said, with no doubt more to come on how this’ll be acheived.
5. Telegram is getting Stories
And lastly, per The Verge, we learned that Telegram is getting Stories. There’s not a single social media app that isn’t trying to be another social media app, and everyone is adding stories, or removing them (thank god). You all know what they are by now, so they need no explanation, but the explanation from Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is that they have been a popular request. “More than half of all feature requests that we receive are related to Stories,” he said. Anyway, they’ll launch early next month.
BONUS ITEM: Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough, who helped pioneer the batteries which power our devices, dies aged 100.
John Goodenough, who co-created the lithium-ion battery, has died at 100. https://t.co/F5v6m7Dmfj
— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) June 26, 2023
Have a great day.