(27 July 2011 – Australia) Another IT glitch at Westpac had customers deprived of salaries and welfare benefits on Tuesday and had staff working hard to rectify problems by the end of the day.Westpac progressively restored the system after experiencing delays overnight in processing some payments to and from other banks.
‘We had a glitch with the processing of one batch of payments overnight which has triggered a flow-on impact and created further delays to payments awaiting processing from earlier this morning,’ a Westpac spokeswoman said.
The problem did not impact online banking, ATMs, POS, and telephone and branch banking.
Customers expecting payments from Westpac or to Westpac accounts were affected, and there were serious processing delays.
The bank urged affected customers, including those waiting for Centrelink payments, to request temporary overdrafts or interim increases to credit card limits from their nearest Westpac branch or call.