DBS PayLah! Down for Some People on Friday, Less Than a Week After a Major DBS Outage

DBS Bank’s Digital Hiccups: A Week of Unexpected Outages, This Time with PayLah!

DBS Bank has found itself in a bit of a “sticky” situation again.

Not once, but twice in a week, the bank’s digital services played hide and seek with its users.

This time, it’s PayLah!

When PayLah! Played Hard to Get

This morning (20 October 2023), as we were gearing up for our weekend plans, some of us found ourselves unable to access the online service DBS PayLah!.

Lest you’re not aware, PayLah! Is like PayNow, but PayLah! is just for DBS users, while anyone can use PayNow.

The Downdetector website, the digital pulse-checker of our times, saw a spike in complaints about DBS as early as 7.45am. By 9am, the number had swelled to about over 400 reports from DBS customers.

At around 10am, DBS took to Facebook, the modern-day town crier, to announce that access to PayLah! was, well, playing hard to get.

They advised their customers to switch gears and use DBS digibank Scan & Pay, or the DBS/POSB debit or credit cards for their transactions.

Talk about going cashless.

The bank has also confirmed that those who are able to access PayLah! and are eligible for the DBS 5 Million Hawker Meals cashback will receive their rebate by Friday.

Introduced in February as a show of support for the beloved hawkers of Singapore, this initiative offers a tantalising $3 discount every Friday.

As of now, DBS ATMs, and other DBS services, are still working.

A Week of Digital Disturbances

This wasn’t the bank’s first rodeo with technical glitches.

Just the last Saturday, DBS had faced an outage that lasted for more than 12 hours.

And it wasn’t just PayLah! that was affected.

Physical ATMs, the bank’s website, and cards were all down, leaving many customers in a lurch. The cause?

An overheating issue at a data centre, which, interestingly, is also used by other organisations.