BNZ online banking services back running after second outage in two days

BNZ’s online banking services and mobile app are down for hundreds of customers for the second time in two days. Photo / Alex Burton

BNZ’s online banking and mobile services are mostly back online and working again, after two outages in two days.

Customers had reported problems with the services this morning, just hours after some yesterday said they were unable to log into their mobile banking apps and were being shown pop-up messages: “It looks like you’ve lost your internet connection. Please try again once your connection is back.”

However, BNZ said on its social media that it “can confirm our online banking channels are now back in service, though customers may experience intermittent issues logging in”.

“We appreciate your patience and apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused,” it said.

BNZ had earlier confirmed at about 10am today that it was experiencing technical difficulties, with more than 350 reports of issues on the website Downdetector.

“Cards and payments aren’t affected, so you’ll still be able to make payments and use our ATMs for cash withdrawals,” it said at the time.

“Our teams are investigating this issue and working to have it resolved as quickly as possible,” the bank said on its social media account. “We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and we’ll update you as soon as we can.”

One social media user said the outage was “very frustrating”, saying she couldn’t get verification codes sent to her so she could use her banking app.

“I still wasn’t able to get back into my app after yesterday,” she said.

Another said: “What a joke.” A third social media user said: “I swear there is an outage every second day, this isn’t good enough.”

BNZ yesterday also suffered an outage in the afternoon, before getting its app and services running again by about 7pm.

A BNZ spokeswoman had previously told the Herald around 4.40pm that the bank was “experiencing a systems issue which is impacting our online banking and customer service channels”.

A screenshot of the pop-up message on the BNZ Mobile app on Saturday afternoon.

By 7.20pm, the BNZ spokeswoman said all issues had been resolved.

“We can confirm that all issues have now been resolved and our banking channels are up and running.

“We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.”

More than 5000 people reported issues with BNZ’s services on the Downdetector website since about 3pm today.

“ATMs, cards and payments are unaffected,” BNZ’s spokeswoman said at the time.

“Our teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

“We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.”

One customer wrote to the Herald about the outage and questioned why banks did not have back-up systems.

“We don’t have access to our own funds, which is infuriating,” she said.

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