(13 October 2022 – Australia) The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated that a planned virtual server software update was the instigator of a highly disruptive outage that impacted 800,000 transactions including Osko over the New Payments Platform (NPP) worth almost A$1 billion dollars.
The outage ceased payments being executed by bank customers via Osko which uses the NPP to transfer money in the retail market in real time. The fault frustrated commercial bank customers attempting to transfer funds via bank apps or websites, triggering wide spread complaints as customers were unsure if payments had been settled correctly.
The outage shut down real-time and overnight payments at banks during a four-hour window after the central bank’s fast settlement service and low-value clearing and settlement service went down between 7:21pm and 11:47pm on Wednesday 12 October.
The RBA confirmed the outage was not related to any cyber attack nor a process error in internal RBA systems.
“We sincerely apologise to industry participants and customers for the inconvenience and disruption caused. It was disappointing that this occurred, and we recognise the impact this would have on people relying on the payments system. I want to assure people that the bank takes the stability of the payments infrastructure very seriously and will double its effort to ensure this does not happen again” stated RBA Deputy Governor, Michele Bullock.