Outages

News about payments outages and their effect

Outages

NAB outage puts technical debt and bank resilience KPIs in focus

Sep 30, 2026

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NAB outage puts technical debt and bank resilience KPIs in focus

A three-hour NAB outage has renewed scrutiny of legacy banking systems and prompted calls for standardised reliability targets, faster reporting and senior accountability when digital services fail.

Outages

Another Mastercard outage hits Australian payments as cards decline

Aug 19, 2026

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Another Mastercard outage hits Australian payments as cards decline

Mastercard suffered another Australia-wide payments outage on Saturday, rendering cards held by millions of Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, Macquarie, Revolut, Bendigo and Bankwest customers useless, as card transactions declined across banks, merchants and mobile wallets.

Outages

AusPayNet's first resilience report skips the Telstra outage

Aug 12, 2026

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AusPayNet's first resilience report skips the Telstra outage

AusPayNet's first Resilience in Payments report calls preparedness an industry-wide job, but its only Australian case study is the 2023 Optus outage, not July's Telstra failure.

Outages

Can you air-gap Visa? ASD's 3-month isolation target meets Australia's payment rails

Jul 29, 2026

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Can you air-gap Visa? ASD's 3-month isolation target meets Australia's payment rails

The Australian Signals Directorate today released revised advice on cutting critical infrastructure off from the internet, corporate networks and everything else.

Commentary

Jul 15, 2026

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Getting paid is priority 1. Always

Last week’s Telstra outage reminded us that getting paid is the most important thing that a business does. Treat it accordingly.

Outages

Telstra outage killed cards again but are we dismantling the cash backup?

Jul 15, 2026

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Telstra outage killed cards again but are we dismantling the cash backup?

Tens of thousands of merchants couldn't accept card payments last Wednesday, and customers were left with cash as the only option to pay for goods and services. Plenty of them didn't have any. The RBA calls physical cash an "all hazards" hedge. But are banks, the government and the card schemes all planning for the day it goes away?

A2A

Invest and coordinate: more work ahead to build real time resilience

Apr 1, 2026

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Invest and coordinate: more work ahead to build real time resilience

Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and NAB are among the industry players who who could make better use of “underutilised critical infrastructure” to finally unlock the power of resilience, trust and real time payments in Australia.

Regulation

RBA confirms an expired certificate took down Australia's payments settlement backbone

Mar 25, 2026

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RBA confirms an expired certificate took down Australia's payments settlement backbone

The RBA's post-incident report on the 27 January RITS outage reveals an uncomfortable truth: the plumbing that moves billions through Australia's financial system was felled by a forgotten digital credential.

Digital & Online

Missed deadline on RBA outage review – the system keeps breaking

Mar 11, 2026

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Missed deadline on RBA outage review – the system keeps breaking

Australia built a cashless economy on infrastructure that can't stay online. The Reserve Bank knows it. The telcos know it. And now, after its own system crashed because someone forgot to renew a certificate, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has missed its own deadline to explain what went wrong.

Digital & Online

RBA releases details of CS crisis powers to protect financial markets

Feb 25, 2026

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RBA releases details of CS crisis powers to protect financial markets

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has published its rules for intervening if there is a threat to domestic financial stability or to the continuity of the Clearing and Settlement (CS) facility’s services that are critical to the functioning of the financial system in Australia.

Regulation

Expiring certificates crashed RBA batch settlements

Feb 11, 2026

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Expiring certificates crashed RBA batch settlements

Expiring certificates were responsible for a 7 hour Reserve Bank outage that saw pays and property settlements delayed for up to four days.

Digital & Online

RBA outage delays some payments for four days

Feb 4, 2026

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RBA outage delays some payments for four days

Pays were late and property settlements delayed after a 7 hour Reserve Bank outage last week caused flow-on impacts across the industry for up to four days.

Digital & Online

Aussie eftpos moves on outage risks with Stand-in Processing but will card issuers play?

Jan 7, 2026

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Aussie eftpos moves on outage risks with Stand-in Processing but will card issuers play?

In an increasingly less-cash world, Australia’s domestic card network eftpos has moved to reduce the impact of bank outages with a new Stand-in Processing feature - but will card issuers be willing to wear the risk?

Digital & Online

ATO urges employers to move early on payday super or risk compliance nightmare

Nov 26, 2025

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ATO urges employers to move early on payday super or risk compliance nightmare

Employers have been warned to move early on payday super, with the ATO expecting 25 times the number of rejected contribution payments and payroll platforms pre-empting cash flow management issues.

Digital & Online

Triple Zero woes raise questions over critical payments infrastructure

Nov 26, 2025

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Triple Zero woes raise questions over critical payments infrastructure

Australia’s critical infrastructure regime covers 13 sectors including financial services, but is the regime in the sector as strong and resilient as Australians need their payments infrastructure to be?

Fintech

ANZ outage highlights digital payments cloud concentration by three major suppliers

Oct 29, 2025

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ANZ outage highlights digital payments cloud concentration by three major suppliers

Amazon and Microsoft host the lion’s share of digital payments infrastructure amid concerns about data sovereignty and outages.