Why was CommBank down? Customers impacted by planned outage for maintenance
Some Commonwealth Bank users found themselves unable to transfer money using their banking app on Saturday morning because of an outage for maintenance work.
Commonwealth Bank — which refers to itself as CommBank for short — said the outage was planned.
It advised customers the maintenance work would render some of its services limited or unavailable from approximately midnight until about 9am AEST on Saturday.
A spokesperson for the bank confirmed to the ABC that customers were notified about the outage via the banking app several days beforehand.
Why was CommBank down?
The bank says it was performing planned maintenance.
This meant that some of the services were “limited or unavailable”.
Why couldn’t I transfer on CommBank?
Because it was one of the services affected by the outage.
That included:
- Payments and transfers on the CommBank app
- NetBank and over the phone banking
- Travel Money cards — they can be used to pay and withdraw money, but can’t be topped up from a CommBank account
- International money transfers are unavailable
The bank said debit cards could still be used, but lower limits may apply.
However, credit cards could still be used as normal.
Business and Merchant customers were also affected.
“Merchant EFTPOS terminals and online payments will be available; however, lower limits may apply to CommBank debit cards when using these platforms,” the bank said on its website.
“Scheduled payments and merchant settlement payments may be processed after the maintenance window.”
How long was it planned for?
Customers were notified days in advance via the CommBank app, the bank’s spokesperson said.
However, some customers appeared to have missed those notifications, with Google Trends data showing a high volume of people searching “Why is Commonwealth Bank down?” and “Why can’t I transfer money CommBank?” on Saturday morning.
Commonwealth Bank posted a “heads up” message about the outage on X on Friday morning, which was met with some criticism.
“First day of school holidays. Not very good timing people,” one X user said.
“This is ridiculous. What a stupid time to do this, it’s the weekend,” another said.
When was CommBank app back online?
The bank says the outage was due to end at approximately 9am AEST.
Customers can check for more outage updates at the bank’s dedicated service updates website.
