Westpac, one of Australia's big four commercial banks, has pulled its online banking service after experiencing significant disruptions. The bank has not provided an explanation for the outage, but is dismissing speculation that it has fallen victim to an external virus or attacks on security.
Westpac has yet to give a date for the restoration of the service.
In a short note on its home page, the bank states: "As we have not been able to quickly repair these problems, we have decided to make Online Banking unavailable rather than continue this unsatisfactory level of service. We are working to restore Online Banking as soon as possible."
The bank has apologised to customers for the failings and is redirecting Web visitors to its telephone banking service, where call centre staff will deal with transactions fee-free.