Digital banking services of UAE lenders that faced interruptions due to the regionwide IT breakdown are slowly coming back online.
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank on Wednesday restored its retail mobile banking services after a hiatus of 48 hours, the lender said in a statement on Wednesday.
The disruption affected ADCB’s online banking, as well as its customer contact centre operations, however, “at no point during the disruption were customer data, accounts, or the security of the bank’s systems compromised”, Abu Dhabi-headquartered lender said.
All other banking services, including branches, ATMs as well as web-based internet banking were available to customers. Corporate and commercial platforms also remained fully operational, ADCB added.
“We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience experienced over the past 48 hours,” said Alaa Eraiqat, chief executive of ADCB Group.
“The reliability of our banking services is fundamental to the trust our customers place in us, and our teams worked tirelessly around the clock to restore services safely and as quickly as possible.”
Customers of First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE’s biggest lender by assets, Dubai’s top lender Emirates NBD and Emirates Islamic were also unable to access all digital services.
ADCB did not say what caused the disruption and it was not clear whether the issues were related to a fire at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre in the UAE, which happened on the same day Iran attempted to strike key sites in the country.
“While our systems are robust, we are taking this opportunity to further strengthen our operational resilience and service infrastructure to ensure we continue to deliver the high standards of reliability and service our customers expect from ADCB, even in unlikely extreme situations like this,” Mr Eraiqat said.
On Wednesday, AWS, Amazon's cloud division, confirmed that two facilities in the UAE “were directly struck”, while in Bahrain a drone strike near one of its sites damaged infrastructure.
Earlier this week Emirates NBD said its phone banking and WhatsApp banking services were experiencing temporary delays.
The National has reached out to FAB, Emirates NBD and Emirates Islamic for further comment.
