SINGAPORE ― Just before noon on Thursday (March 1), Grab announced that it has “resolved all issues” with its app that had affected tens of thousands of commuters across the region.

Thanking customers for their understanding and apologising for the inconvenience caused, Grab also said that customers can resume their bookings with all types of payment. Grab told TODAY that services were restored fully at about 11am.

From early Thursday morning, customers of the ride-hailing app in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam faced difficulties booking their rides, with the company announcing that it was facing a technical issue with its app.

Screengrab of Grab Vietnam informing users that there was a technical issue and it is working to fix the problem on Thursday morning. 

In Singapore, where the company is based, users first reported issues with the app from around 7am.

A teacher who wanted to be known only as Ms Low said she encountered an error message informing her that the server was down when she tried to book a Grab car to get to school around 6.30am.

The 59-year-old turned to Uber instead as she was in a rush and could not walk out to hail a taxi.

"I've never encountered this problem before. It went on for at least half an hour," she added.

A 40-year-old Grab driver who declined to be named said that he was unable to log into the app from 7am to 8.30am, but was able to log on to the app and take bookings from 8.30am.

The full-time driver said that he expected to suffer at least S$60 in lost earnings during the outage.

But it was not till around 8.30am on Thursday that the company publicly announced, on its app and social media pages, that it was facing a technical issue with its app, and that some rides may only accept cash payments.

"Our engineers are already looking into this and we expect to be back up in 30 minutes," said Grab Singapore’s Facebook post at 8.30am. However, the post was subsequently taken down.

Grab Vietnam and Grab Indonesia posted similar messages on their Facebook pages around the same time, but Vietnam’s post was also subsequently removed.

Grab Malaysia tweeted on their Twitter accounts around 8.40am that it faced “a technical issue this morning that interrupted our service”. They added that the company was working hard to fix it and the app was coming back online.

In an update posted on Grab Singapore’s Facebook page around 9.20am, it said that apart from cash, users can book rides using GrabPay-linked cards.

"We are still working on GrabPay Credits and Rewards," it added. "Rest assured your balances will reappear in app once we do!"

But a check around 9.30am showed that the app was still down for some users in Singapore, although others were progressively able to book rides using cash and GrabPay-linked cards.