FNB under fire about Black Friday problems
First National Bank (FNB) has been experiencing problems for over five hours on Black Friday, 28 November 2025, with customers unable to log into their online banking or make payments.
Several FNB Business Banking customers have also informed MyBroadband that they are unable to transact or access their financial information.
They say that sometimes they can’t log in at all. If they can log in, there is limited functionality. Neither payments nor transfers are working as they cannot be authorised.
“I have never been so inconvenienced in my life, im stuck with no way to process payments,” one customer said on Twitter/X.
“FNB, what’s happening with you? I can’t access my app nor use mobile banking and I need my money asap,” another said.
“FNB this is going on since 10am this morning. How am I supposed to run a business if I can’t pay anything? Seems like this happens every year when Black Friday hits,” said another.
One customer was blunt in expressing his frustration with the bank: “FNB, you guys are downplaying your app and online failures! #fnbdown.”
Outage tracking service Downdetector shows that FNB customers began reporting issues from around 09:30 on Friday.
The problem initially appeared to be related to the FNB mobile app, which intermittently displays a server error message when customers attempt to sign in.
“Request cannot be processed. We are unable to process your request at the moment. The cause is being investigated,” the error message states.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Please try again later.”
However, FNB told MyBroadband that its app was not offline, but was experiencing intermittent failures due to extraordinarily high transaction volumes.
“As of 08:05 this morning, FNB has seen a 50% year-on-year increase in cumulative Virtual Card transactions for Black Friday,” a spokesperson for the bank told MyBroadband.
“While thousands of transactions continue to be processed, some customers may still experience intermittent access but the matter is being closely managed to enhance capacity.”
Fallback authorisation mechanism works, if available
Certain payment providers are allowing customers to use FNB’s fallback one-time PIN (OTP) authentication system.
While this significantly increases the time it takes to authenticate a transaction, it provides a way to circumvent the current issues in FNB’s online systems when approving payments.
TFG’s online shopping platform, Bash, has a notice in its app warning customers about FNB’s ongoing card payment problems.
“Some users may get a payment failure using FNB cards. Please try again or use another method,” it states.
In feedback sent to MyBroadband on Friday morning, FNB stated that all its other channels were functioning at full capacity.
“We thank our customers for their support and apologise for any frustration caused,” it said.
FNB says services returning to normal
Just after 15:30, FNB said that the performance of its online channels was returning to normal.
“We have addressed issues across several FNB services, including intermittent login and payment challenges on Business Banking,” it stated.
“Performance has improved significantly and continues to stabilise, with our teams actively monitoring and managing all aspects of our services.”
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