First National Bank customers were having trouble accessing the bank’s website on Tuesday – and there have even been reports of card payments not going through.

The downtime came on the 25th of the month, a day many employed South Africans are paid.

Data from Downdetector showed a spike in problem reports for the FNB website just before 9am. The high number of reports in the last 24 hours suggests that the issue may have started on Monday when there was also a spike in reports during the afternoon period.

A message on e-retailer Takealot’s website greeted shoppers with the message: “FNB cardholders are experiencing difficulty completing payment. If you’re unable to make payment using your FNB card, please use one of our alternative payment methods.”

Merchants TechCentral spoke to on Tuesday morning reported that they had not had any issues facilitating FNB card payments.

Repeated attempts by TechCentral to access the FNB website on Tuesday were successful only some of the time, which suggests that the issues were intermittent.

“We’re aware that some of our customers are experiencing intermittent access to certain services on our digital channels. Our IT teams are working on restoring full functionality to the affected services,” FNB said in response to questions about the downtime.

Update: FNB confirmed that the issue that led to disruptions to its digital channels on Monday and Tuesday was resolved. It said this in an e-mail late on Tuesday afternoon. “We can confirm that the issue was resolved. All services are operating normally,” the bank said. It did not say what caused the problems. – © 2023 NewsCentral Media