After a power outage on Saturday, HDFC bank services started working again on Sunday. The power outage that started on Saturday evening lasted for hours affecting UPI and ATM transactions.
On Saturday, a lot of customers took to Twitter to complain about the problems they faced when using the bank’s internet banking, UPI, debit, and credit cards. Reports also suggest that the linked accounts on apps such as Swiggy, Paytm, and Google Pay were also not working. Many customers were also not able to receive the One Time Password (OTP). This prompted a lot of angry customers to post their complaints on Twitter.
An unexpected outage at one of our data centers has impacted some of our services. We are working towards restoration of the services, which shouldn’t take long. The inconvenience is sincerely regretted.
— HDFC Bank Cares (@HDFCBank_Cares) November 21, 2020
Complaints started rolling in on Saturday at around 6 PM and peaked around 8 PM. HDFC Customer Care addressed the issue on Twitter at nearly midnight. They said in their post, “An unexpected outage at one of our data centers has impacted some of our services. We are working towards the restoration of the services, which shouldn’t take long. The inconvenience is sincerely regretted”. HDFC has however not stated the reason for the outage at the data center.
HDFC Services finally resumed after more than 12 hours
The services finally started after more than 12 hours. On Sunday morning, HDFC posted another tweet where they declare their services have finally resumed. Although, the bank has mentioned that customers may still have to face some intermittent issues as the system stabilizes.
Dear Customers,
The services impacted following the outage have been restored. While you may face intermittent issues as the system stabilizes there is no reason to worry now! Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused. Thank you for bearing with us during this period.
— HDFC Bank Cares (@HDFCBank_Cares) November 22, 2020
They said, “The services impacted following the outage have been restored. While you may face intermittent issues as the system stabilizes there is no reason to worry now! Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused. Thank you for bearing with us during this period.”
This however wasn’t enough to satisfy The Reserve Bank of India. According to ET, they have sought details and the reasons behind the data center outage. The RBI also said that an internal team will be dispatched to look into the matter and take further steps.
HDFC faced a similar issue back in December 2019. At that time, the customers were unable to pay their EMI loans or clear their bills on time. In January 2020, the then executive director Sashidhar Jagdishan addressed the issue. He stated that the December outage was not due to any kind of cyberattack but because the lender ‘underestimated’ growth in payment volumes and the disruption was more of a capacity issue.
Back in 2018, HDFC faced another technical glitch in its app when it launched a new version. HDFC is India’s largest private sector lender in India currently.
