Picture this: you’re out with your crush, and you guys are having dinner. Once the meal’s done, you volunteer to pay for the meal and hush her when she insists on paying her own.

“You’re not paying anything on my watch,” you say, gesturing to your Mickey Mouse watch.

As she beams, you feel the rush of pride, and chest poking out like a bazooka you head to the counter and proudly flash your spanking new OCBC card to the cashier.

“Paywave please,” you say with a smirk.

As the cashier rolls her eyes, you turn to your date and show her your all 28 of your perfect, white teeth (disregarding wisdom teeth because you don’t need them to be wise).

“Nothing but the best for you.” You wink. “I-”

“Erm, Sir?”

You turn to the cashier, annoyed. “What? Can’t you catch a hint? Just because I’m perfect like Jonah Hill with Dwayne Johnson’s body and Zac Efron’s face doesn’t mean that you can interrupt me, okay.”

She gestured to the card. “It’s invalid.”

You falter. “What?”

“It’s invalid.”

You stare at her for a bit, cough and draw out another card from your wallet. “Try this one. NETS never fails.” Thereafter you look at your date, whose smile has slipped off a notch. “Don’t worry, I got this-”

“Nope, doesn’t work either.”

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You pause, close your eyes, take a deep breath before drawing your final card.

“Visa, I believe in you.” You kiss it, before throwing it like a basketball at the cashier.

“Nope,” she said a long ten seconds later. “Doesn’t work.”

There was a long pause before you slowly turn to your date.

“Hey, about your offer just now…” you say with a smile that could melt even Icy Ivy. She looks at you, her lips curled to the point it’s starting to resemble a protractor.

“Is it still valid?”

Suffice it to say; you’re not getting a second date after that. But did you know something?

It really happened.

The whole transaction thingy anyway. I don’t know about the guy.

1. Service Disruption

The technical staff members of OCBC might not have much in common with SMRT employees, but for a brief period of time last Saturday (1 Sep), they had a lot in tandem.

Yes, my folks; OCBC did an SMRT. With a classic transaction breakdown, no less.

The incident, that occurred at around 8:45 p.m., had quite a number of users reporting in, stating that the bank’s automatic teller machines (ATMs), online banking system, 24-hour hotline and credit card transactions were all down.

In this connected world, that’s one heck of a big issue.

2. Clarification

Following the realisation, the bank released a warning tweet on the land where a blue bird reigns supreme:

Disastrous? Disastrous. Just look at all the “satisfied” customers in the next point.

3. Approval rating: 9/10

It must have been a tough time, seeing how consumers were unable to withdraw cash from OCBC ATMs, check on their bank accounts via the online route, or even use their credit cards. Those in need of a soothing voice reassuring them were sorely disappointed, seeing how even the Siri of OCBC, their 24-hour hotline, had pulled The Great Escape.

And check out these confused tweets.

Also, Facebook user Wilson Tay had this to say:

“I also was briefly stuck at Sheng Siong as I only (had) OCBC cards and both were declined (at) the time.

“Luckily I had some cash to pay, otherwise it would have been awkward considering I cannot perform any withdrawal or even (perform a) balance enquiry at the ATMs either.”

Wise word, Wilson. Cash is King.

4. Lao Po, can come and pay for me first? I bo lui

But perhaps the most affected one of them all, was actually Mr Johnny Chan, systems programmer and unfortunate victim of The Tragedy of OCBC (as I like to christen it). Having dined in at Thai Express n Compass One shopping mall, he tried to pay his meal only to discover the ugly truth:

All forms of card payment, including Paywave, Nets and Visa, did not work.

(OMG that scenario really did happen seh)

“I had only an OCBC card with me so the manager allowed me to go to the ATM to withdraw money but the ATM declined my withdrawal too,” he said.

“Sorry, we are unable to process your request,” the screen read. “Would you like to perform another transaction?”

In the end, the dude had to call his wife over for help.

“I had to call my wife to come over and pay for the meal for me. It was very embarrassing.”

“It is unbelievable that a major bank can have such an outage. After this, I feel like it is better to always have a second option when making payments like cash or cards from other banks.”

Lesson learnt: always have more than one bank. No?

5. Systems back up

Thankfully, it seems that the outage was kept as short as possible.

Services were duly restored by 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, nearly four hours after the disruption started at 8:45 p.m.

Four hours is a long time if you’re stuck in a restaurant with no cash.

6. Cause

But don’t worry, folks (including you Mr Johnny Chan), the disruption’s not actually because someone hacked into your accounts and transferred everything to the poor, starving kids of Africa.

I think.

Instead, the bank itself has expressed that the disruption in question was actually caused by a technical problem.

7. Apology

It seems that OCBC has taken a sleek leaf from SMRT’s book, as the bank has issued an apology that hopefully doesn’t turn out to be the first of many.

“I would like to apologise to all our customers who were impacted by the disruption to our services that began intermittently at 8.45pm,” said OCBC Group CEO Samuel Tsien in a statement.

“I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and I am grateful for the patience and understanding of our customers. We are investigating the root cause of the technical problem,” he added.

8. And responses were overwhelming

Though contrary to what you might think, it’s not negative…

Not all anyway.

For example, we have this comment that so kindly lauds the positive aspect here.

But that just paves the way for

Andddd

When I was young, I had a fire extinguisher I named Bob. I was pretty close to it, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to separate. That was a sad day; and one that I’m not keen on reliving. And now that I look back…

I think OCBC would probably need it.

(Article continues below) Do you know that during the Hungry Ghost Month, you shouldn’t lean on the wall or talk to yourself? Here’s a video on the list of taboos you probably didn’t know about: if you don’t want any unwanted visitors today, you’d better watch it!

(Since you’re here, subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more informative videos lah)

9. This wasn’t the first incident this year

In February this year, electronic payment services provider NETS Services crashed, causing its numerous consumers to dig out their mouldy cash notes for the first time since like 1987.

Fortunately, it was back up after an hour.

And that was enough to make people go apeshit. So can you imagine a 4-hour downtime during “peak hours”?

10. Is it a wise idea to go cashless?

Cash might be an ancient relic of the past, but truly when shit hits the fan…

It’s really the only option that can secure your way out.

Which makes you wonder…

Is cashless really the future?

On a side note, this kind of makes sense to me:

Okay, no wonder the downtime doesn’t affect me.

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