SINGAPORE: DBS services, including mobile banking, ATMs and NETS, have been restored after an overnight disruption on Saturday (Mar 8).

According to outage tracking site, Downdetector.com, complaints spiked just after midnight and continued past 9am. 

DBS acknowledged the issues accessing digital services in a Facebook post at about 2.30am, adding that customers can continue to make payments using DBS or POSB cards or perform transactions via ATMs. 

The bank said in an update that banking services, including ATMs and NETS, would not be available until 5am.

“We seek your patience while we actively work to resolve the issue. Customers can however continue to make payments via DBS/POSB debit and credit cards,” DBS said at about 3.50am.

It later added that services, including mobile and online banking, digital wallet PayLah!, DBS mTrading and ATMs, returned to normal as at 5.48am.

“We appreciate our customers’ patience and are sorry for the inconvenience caused,” the bank said on Facebook. 

However, customers continued to experience outages. 

“What time already? Still down,” said a Nick Lim on DBS’ Facebook page at about 9.30am. Another user posted a screenshot at about 8.20am showing that the bank’s website was “unavailable”.

In response to CNA's questions about the duration and cause of the disruption, a DBS spokesperson said: “All services returned to normal as at 5.48am on Mar 8, 2025.” 

It added that it is investigating the cause of the incident. 

“Our monitoring systems detected that our customers faced difficulties accessing our banking services, including ATMs and NETS. Our teams immediately worked to resolve the issue with utmost priority,” said the spokesperson. 

DBS, Singapore’s largest lender, was hit by a string of disruptions to its digital banking services in 2023, prompting the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to bar the bank from any acquisitions of new business ventures for six months.

The bank was also required to pause non-essential IT changes for six months and was not allowed to reduce the size of its branch and ATM networks in Singapore.

DBS said in November 2023 that it had set aside a special budget of S$80 million to enhance its technology and system resiliency.

The bank’s senior management, including CEO Piyush Gupta, also took cuts to their variable pay to take responsibility for the series of service disruptions in 2023.