'I felt so paiseh for not being able to pay': DBS customers express frustration and disappointment over day-long outage

SINGAPORE — With DBS bank's digital services down for the most part of Wednesday (March 29), Mr Mark Lai had to spend an extra two hours finding an automated teller machine (ATM), queuing for it and going to a bank branch in order to repay his housing loan that was due the same day. 

Fortunately, Mr Lai said that his monthly loan repayment — which was a couple of thousand dollars, was within the ATM's withdrawal limit. 

“I can’t imagine if the DBS ATM was down, too,” the 48-year-old head of business development said, adding that the whole situation and how long DBS took to rectify the disruption to its digital services was “frustrating” and “disappointing”.  

"There was a long queue (for the ATM). I guess people were using the old methods of transferring (money)," he added. 

DBS customers were unable to log in to e-banking platforms such as the PayLah! mobile wallet since Wednesday morning, with reports of service outages beginning to surge at about 8.30am, the Downdetector website showed.

Services resumed only at 5.45pm, with its digital services — Digibank Mobile and Online, PayLah! and mTrading — returning to normal, the bank said.

DBS customers who spoke to TODAY expressed their frustrations at not being able to make their payments because most of them preferred going cashless. 

One of those affected was Mr Wong Zhi Yong, 29, who had gone to a food court in Jurong to buy cai fan (rice with assorted dishes) for lunch. 

He uses only DBS' services and could not pay using other e-payment modes. He also did not have any money on hand because he usually goes out without carrying cash. 

“Luckily, I’m a regular customer so the auntie (stall owner) asked me to pay her back later. If not, I will have to wash plates for her already,” the information technology engineer quipped. 

Mr Muhd Taufiq, 32, found himself in the same predicament after ordering around S$20 worth of food at the Ramadan bazaar in Geylang Serai around 5pm on Wednesday. 

“I felt so paiseh (Hokkien for embarrassed) for ordering food but not being able to pay,” he said. 

Although he was aware of the outage, he had not expected it to last so long. 

“This is so far the longest outage I’ve ever experienced. If I've known it’s still not up yet, I would have prepared cash earlier.” 

Due to the extra time spent locating an ATM, he barely made it home in time to break his fast for Ramadan. 

For other DBS customers, the disruption had affected their bank transfers but most said that the receiving parties were understanding. 

'THOUGHT ACCOUNT WAS HACKED'

Mr Azri Masran — a 31-year-old interaction designer at professional services firm Accenture — was planning to use DBS’ PayNow service to make a Zakat Fitrah payment on behalf of his family and himself during lunch hour.

Zakat Fitrah is an obligatory Islamic donation for Ramadan to help the less fortunate.

Mr Azri, who frequently uses DBS’ PayNow service to pay for daily expenses at convenience stores, was shocked to see a pop-up screen prompting him to reset his personal identification number (PIN) when he tried logging into the DBS mobile application.

“When the pop-up appeared, I felt suspicious and thought that my account could possibly be hacked,” he said.

Other DBS customers also recounted on the bank's Facebook page similar experiences of being prompted to reset their PIN numbers after trying to log in to the app. 

Mr Azri said that he tried accessing the app several times, but eventually gave up after reading a news update on the disruption.

“I felt slightly disappointed as this was the first time something like this has happened to me. Usually, DBS is quite reliable, at least for me,” he added.

Due to the disruption, he intends to complete his Zakat Fitrah on a different day within the month of Ramadan.

Similarly, Ms Zai Mohd also wanted to make donations for Ramadan. However, when she tried logging in to her online banking account at 8.15am, she found that the system was down. 

“Thankfully, the people that I was dealing with understood my situation and gave me some time.” 

The 45-year-old housewife was finally able to make the transfers about 10 hours later at around 6pm. 

For business owner Stan Ho, the disruption had affected about a third of his customers. 

The 27-year-old who owns an automotive distributorship said that out of 10 customers, around three to four were unable to pay for their car parts due to the outage.

Each transaction varied from S$400 to S$3,500.

“I’ve a lot of mutual trust with my customers and they did PayNow me when the services resumed,” he said. 

On how he felt when the problem arose, Mr Ho said: “I wasn’t really anxious. My customers were more anxious than I am.”

The Monetary Authority of Singapore on Wednesday evening said that the disruption was "unacceptable", coming a year after a similar incident in Nov 2021. The regulator added that it would take supervisory actions against DBS after gathering the necessary facts.

In a statement, DBS chief executive officer Piyush Gupta said it is the bank's "utmost priority" to review the incident and it deeply regrets the inconvenience caused.