ING Australia website, app offline and payments ‘delayed’ amid outage

Customers at a major Australian bank have been warned to ignore scammers trying to take advantage of a near day-long outage.

A major Australian bank has issued a scam warning to its customers who have been hit by an hours-long service outage hours.

ING Australia customers first reported being unable to access the website or banking app about 9am on Wednesday.

At its peak, more than 2300 people reported issues accessing ING Australia banking services on Wednesday, according to website Down Detector.

Customers first reported the outage about 9am; by 7.30pm, ING said “progress was being made”.

“Most customers should now be able to access the app and online banking as normal,” the update said.

“If you’re unable to access the app or online banking, or have any concerns about your acconout, please call us on 133 464.”

We're aware scammers are calling customers or posting on social media claiming they can help to restore access. ING will never call you about online banking services and all updates about this issue are being shared from our officialsocial media pages and on our website.

— ING Australia (@ING_Aust) October 30, 2024

Early Wednesday evening, ING posted another message warning of scammers trying to take advantage of customers.

“We’re aware scammers are calling customers or posting on social media claiming they can help to restore online and app access,” the post said.

“ING will never call you about online banking services and all updates about this issues are being shared on our official ING Australia social media pages and on our website.”

In an earlier statement, ING said it was “aware that some customers are experiencing issues accessing the ING website and app”.

The bank said the issue had been “identified” and apologised to impacted customers as its staff made “progress in resolving the disruption”.

“This issue does not impact the ability to make payments using a card or mobile device,” a spokesperson said.

“It also does not affect automated scheduled payments.

“We are very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing and will continue to provide updates as we make progress.”

Some ING users are unable to log on to their accounts.

The issues with ING happened on Wednesday.

Customers took to social media to vent frustration at the outage that left them unable to access the ING Australia website and app.

“Hope things are fixed fast, I need to put fuel in (my) car so I can work this afternoon but can’t pay for it until I can transfer funds between my ING accounts,” one user said.

Another said: “Just arrived at my holiday destination to find i don’t have access to my money. Again. Thanks ING”.

Other users voiced anger at what they said was a lack of communication by the bank which first issued a statement hours after first reports on outage.

“I can’t get on the app or website either. It’s gone ghost mode,” a customer said.

Another user said the “genuine thing to do would be update customers on the fact your banking app appears to have stopped working”

“Seems that you should be approaching this with a similar urgency as your customers have to know what’s going on,” they said.

“Any feedback on your app and website being down would be handy...... when your ready. All good, just got bills to pay,” another user said.

“It’s only taken your company 4.5hrs to let us know. Cheers for the heads up. Can’t expect much better from ING I guess..... time to switch to a real bank I guess.”

Another customer said on Facebook there was a “systemic issue for users trying to access the app and website”.

“The phone recording tells me to go into either of those to contact someone to report an issue,” they said.

Hi Neil,We are aware that some customers are currently experiencing issues accessing the ING website & app and delays making and receiving payments. Our team are working urgently to resolve this issue. We are sorry any inconvenience this is causing.
^Tanya

— ING Australia (@ING_Aust) October 29, 2024

“Trying to call and the options available to try and talk to someone, are incredibly vague.

“Will definitely be changing banks.”

Outages were first reported to DownDetector about 9am, before dipping slightly and spiking again about midday.

Many user first complained of issues in the late-morning and some had reported the issues had been resolved for them later.

Originally published as ING Australia website, app offline and payments ‘delayed’ amid outage