Westpac And St George Experience Widespread Outage, Locking Customers Out Of Banking Services

An unexpected outage on Monday caused a widespread blackout of Westpac and St George systems, preventing customers from accessing their banking portals. Both mobile and desktop services were significantly impacted, locking many users out of their accounts.

Westpac cited a technical glitch as the reason for the blackout, which locked some customers out of its app, but the issues were resolved within two hours, Sky News reported.

Apart from St George, Westpac's other subsidiaries -- Bank of Melbourne and Bank SA -- were also affected by the blackout. It all started with a minor connectivity blip at 9:00 a.m., with things spiraling out of control at around 12:40 p.m.

"We're aware that customers are experiencing issues accessing online and mobile banking," the bank said on X. "Our teams are working to fix the issue. We're sorry for the inconvenience and will continue to share updates here."

At least 6,000 reports of issues with internet banking have been filed by 1.10 p.m., per Down Detector.

"Our online and mobile banking services have now been restored. We apologise for the disruption this afternoon and thank you for your patience during this time," a Westpac spokesperson told 7 News after services bounced back to normal.

Individuals affected by the issue took to their social media handles to vent their frustration. The temporary outage also left many customers strapped for cash, per 7 News.

"What is going on at Westpac," one person asked in their social media post. "Why is the app and online banking not working? I need to do a transfer and pay bills," another added.

"OK it's been two hours now, this is getting a little bit outrageous," a third said.

The outage came close on the heels of Westpac's decision to scrap its cardless cash service across Australia.