Massive Commonwealth Bank outage caused by infrastructure upgrade

Millions of Aussies are still frustrated by a huge Commonwealth Bank blackout. Now the reason behind the stuff-up has been revealed.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has apologised for a major systems outage that left customers out of pocket and forced some branches to close — and some payments may still be delayed.

The issue, which affected bank transfers and other online services, spanned 12 hours, beginning early on Thursday afternoon until late Friday morning.

Now the outage as been traced to an infrastructure upgrade that crippled the bank’s real-time transactions platform.

People all across the country were experiencing issues. Picture: Down Detector/Supplied

“We are working through the backlog of payments as quickly as possible and rest assured that all payments both into and out of customer accounts are being processed as a priority,” CBA said in a statement.

However, according to iTnews, non-CBA customers meant to receive money from Australia’s biggest bank may have the wait until early next week for funds to clear.

The bank told the website some payments “may be delayed” before they drop into accounts.

Now questions are being asked as to why the upgrade was rolled out on Thursday afternoon, when millions of Aussie were heading out to lunch.

“We are very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers,” CBA said.

“We want to assure customers that their accounts are safe.”

Yesterday, hundreds of customers took to social media to complain about the inconvenience and a number threatened to close their accounts.

The blackout lasted 12 hours. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

“My 14 year old son needed $. I couldn’t transfer … This is the final straw. I’m leaving,” one person posted on Twitter under the user handle Tammo.

@CommBank I'm getting errors from netbank. Transfers fail and SSO to ComSec fails. pic.twitter.com/oNc9fGrVvS

— RabbitFishFrog (@rabbitfishfrog) October 17, 2019

“Just as I’m about to get some funds out of my netbank saver to my debiting account so I can pay for upcoming lunch. grrr,” another user wrote.

“Hopefully it’s fixed soon. Might be a cheap lunch, as I only have 5 dollars on me now. Shall check later,” one said.

Another added: “Whelp, I’m leaving Commbank. Out of fuel at a petrol station and can’t transfer to pay for it. Thanks guys.”

went to get lunch and couldn’t pay because my commbank app wasn’t working, love life

— mel ❅ (@melholzhauser) October 17, 2019

I still haven't been able to use my card/internet banking can we have a update on what's down so I know what I can do with my life right now. In a world where you have pushed for ease of bank cards and online should of stayed with saving actual cash. Very big let down @CommBank

— Pat (@Pat86908485) October 17, 2019

45 minutes between service updates for such a large issue is unacceptable

— Rachel Wilton (@RachelWilton5) October 17, 2019

— with Ally Foster