Standard Bank has apologised to its clients for technical glitches that lasted several hours on Monday.

“The bank regrets any inconvenience caused,” Standard Bank chief executive in personal and business banking Funeka Montjane said in a statement.

“We are investigating the root cause of the system failure. Our initial investigation has determined that the incident was caused by hardware failure,” said Montjane, adding that the system was repaired within two hours.

Disgruntled clients, however, turned to social networking site Twitter to express frustration.

“Back up and running! Where?” tweeted @dano2512 an hour after the bank claimed to have resolved the problem.

Standard Bank clients claimed they could not withdraw money from ATMs, and their cards were being declined at point-of-sale devices at shops. Internet and cellphone banking applications were also down.

Radio personality Redi Tlhabi took to her Twitter account to comment on the situation.

“Tjo! Standard Bank! This type of problem at this time of the month!!?? Now service providers & creditors think we are making things up,” she tweeted.

Some of those who tweeted on the matter expressed embarrassment when their cards were declined at several retailers.
Other potential clients, however, expressed relief at not being affected.

@unathi_m said: “To think I almost opened an account with Standard Bank today.”

“Anyone who switched from FNB to Standard Bank after last week’s pay day fiasco is probably banging their head on a wall right now,” said @jonathangmeyer.

He was referring to technical problems that were also experienced by First National Bank last month.

Some FNB clients complained that their salaries were not deposited into their accounts on the 25th as scheduled. Others were unable to access their funds while some complained of their debit orders going off twice.

Meanwhile, Standard Bank said it would monitor its systems closely. — Sapa