FNB hit by big outage

First National Bank (FNB) appears to have suffered an outage, with customers reporting issues paying with virtual cards and merchants complaining that their speed-point systems aren’t working.

Reports of issues at FNB surged on Downdetector from around 12:30 on Saturday, 29 June 2024.

At the time of writing, 59% of reports on Downdetector are related to online banking, 29% are related to credit card payments, and 11% are related to online login issues.

However, online logins on FNB’s web-based online banking platform appears to be unaffected.

A MyBroadband reader and FNB customer said card machines are returning “Response Code 05” errors.

“FNB appears to be down. I just tried multiple times to pay for something, with two different cards, and it returns ‘Response Code 05’ on the machine,” they said.

“The manager then told me everyone who’s tried to pay with an FNB card in the last while has had the same issue.”

They added that they had unsuccessfully tried to contact FNB support through its secure chat.

Customers also took to X (formerly Twitter) to ask FNB about the outage and voice their frustration.

“@FNBSA is really messing around today. None of your speed points are working,” one user posted.

“@FNBSA is there an issue with transactions? Cards are declining?” another said.

However, many merchants have also complained of issues with their speed-point machines.

“@FNBSA no communication re speedpoint services being offline. Pathetic. Lost a lot of money today,” one business customer said.

“@FNBSA Please update your speeds-point systems come month we have huge issues with network and we are losing business…” another posted.

Update: 14:00 — Customers are now reporting that they are now able to make card payments again.

FNB also acknowledged the issues in an SMS notification sent to customers.

“We are aware of the inconvenience experienced when trying to use your card on the 29th of June, 2024,” it said.

“These issues are currently being investigated. Any charges to impacted customers will be reversed. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”

FNB confirmed the issues with card purchases on Saturday, 29 June 2024. However, it advised that online banking and ATMs were unaffected.

“The issue has since been resolved. We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience,” it added.

The graph below shows the increase in reports of issues with FNB on Downdetector at 12:30 on Saturday, 29 June 2024.