Everything About the DBS Disruption, Which Actually Affected Other Companies, Too

You probably have heard by now that DBS suffered an outage which started yesterday.

Many services from DBS, including PayNow, bank transfers and credit card payments from DBS were not working.

This obviously inconvenienced a lot of people.

But the good thing is that the outage has since ceased, and nobody seems to have lost their money in the meantime.

While DBS bore the brunt of all the hate from people caused by the outage, other companies were also affected during the same period.

That’s because the reason why DBS was done can be traced to a data centre issue.

Here’s more about the disruption in DBS services which just occurred.

DBS Services Were Disrupted for More Than 12 Hours

Starting from around 3 p.m. yesterday (14 October 2023), you may have felt very frustrated with DBS, one of Singapore’s largest and most commonly used banks.

After all, DBS experienced yet another disruption in its services that spanned more than 12 hours.

It was just confirmed to be resolved today (15 October 2023) in the morning, based on a Facebook post by DBS.

During the downtime of more than half a day, customers’ PayNow and FAST transactions, which were linked to DBS accounts, could not work.

DBS ATMs were also not working (though this issue was resolved around 10.10 p.m. last night).

Customers who were using DBS credit cards and debit cards also were unable to use their cards as intended.

For businesses that used DBS-issued card terminals, accepting payment was also disrupted.

All in all, it was one hot mess.

Reason for Disruption Was a Data Centre Issue

While some people were very upset that DBS’ services were disrupted for yet another time this year, perhaps the more important thing to do is ask why there was a disruption.

How do we stop these disruptions from happening again and again?

This time, it seems that the service disruptions were due to “an issue at a data centre”.

The said data centre is none other than Equinix, who spoke to Channel News Asia about the outrage, saying that they had a “technical issue” at one of the data centres.

How vague.

Let’s hope we get more information about what the technical issue was, as Equinix told Channel News Asia that it was investigating the issue.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is also following up with DBS as its services resume so we can expect some proper explanations down the road.

Other Services Were Also Disrupted During the Same Time

Although everyone was talking about DBS service disruptions, other companies actually experienced downtime as they used the same data centre.

Some examples include Citibank, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, as Channel News Asia found through looking at sites like Downdetector.