‘I carried around my piggy bank’, says customer during DBS, Citibank service outage

Administrative officer Anderson Tan had a silver tin in her hand whenever she went out to buy something last Saturday evening and on Sunday.

Roughly the size of a Carnation milk tin, the container is her piggy bank, and she drew looks and smiles when she dug out money from it to pay for her purchases.

The 55-year-old was among thousands of DBS and Citibank customers affected by the disruption in banking services on Saturday. Both banks fully restored their services by Sunday morning.

“I am not a shy person, so I was okay (with the looks),” she told The Straits Times.

But she was in a state of panic earlier on Saturday afternoon, ironically after a long, relaxing massage.

She could not pay for her $60 massage bill despite multiple attempts using digital payment platforms PayLah and PayNow, as well as Nets. Embarrassed, she was at a loss about what to do.

She said: “I was staring at the masseuse, and it was as if they thought I was trying to bluff them for a free massage.”

It was not long before her phone started lighting up with messages from her friends about the banking disruptions.

“I had to call a friend and ask if he had an account with any other bank so he could help transfer money to the masseuse first,” she said.

She then resorted to using $8 from her piggy bank to buy dinner on Saturday and, not wanting to risk the same embarrassment the next day, she continued to lug her piggy bank around to pay for two other meals on Sunday. 

It was a good thing her car had about a half-tank of petrol, or she would have been unable to top up her tank as well.

Marketing analyst Darius Chew, however, would not have been able to carry around a piggy bank even if he wanted to because he had his hands full with his three young children at the zoo on Saturday. 

He said: “My wife and I packed a few sandwiches and water for the kids, but kids being kids, they finished them quickly. We headed over to the shops at the zoo to get food and water, but there was already a long queue.”

Neither he nor his wife had any cash on them, and the children started feeling antsy after an hour, so Mr Chew, 35, cut the trip short and went home.

He had no idea that there was an outage of DBS’ and Citibank’s services until people queuing up at the zoo eateries told him. He knew that he and his wife, both of whom mainly use ApplePay with their DBS cards, were in trouble.

He also could not find any water coolers in the zoo.  

While the outage was a pain point for many, some like DBS user Akaash Srivastava, who teaches pottery, were touched by the kindness of strangers.

He was standing in line at a Pet Lovers Centre outlet in the eastern part of Singapore when he was forced to use cash for two tins of goat milk powder for his kittens, which cost $60. 

He had only $50 with him, but the cashier made an exception and allowed him to pay the remainder later.

Mr Akaash, 26, lives about 10 minutes from the shop, and has been relying on the outlet for his pet necessities for about five years now. 

He said: “I go to this place very often, so there was an element of trust when the shop agreed to let me pay later. But those who don’t live nearby and needed to get something for their pets would definitely feel helpless and angry.”

Mr Akaash said one of his family members was unable to pay for her shopping at Giant Hypermarket in Tampines, and had to return everything to the shelves because she did not have enough cash.

At Ikea next door, Mr Hari, 30, wrapped up a shopping trip to the Swedish furniture giant with his girlfriend and paid for everything without any trouble at about 3pm.

He stopped at a FairPrice supermarket, picked up some groceries and stood in line at the cashier’s and tried to extend his GetGo car rental.

That was when the transaction kept failing. As a result, he had to pay a $50 late fee.

He put two and two together when he saw the shopper in front of him at the checkout counter unable to pay as well.

“Would they lock us out of the car and leave us stranded? Would I get a hefty penalty fine? I wasn’t sure,” said Mr Hari, who works in the digital marketing sector and is a DBS customer.

“Once I had access to my banking, I got on GetGo’s live chat to ask them to waive my late return fee. They said that they would raise the case to their finance team, but would not be able to give me any assurances,” he added.

On a Reddit discussion thread about the service disruption, user hantanemahuta commented: “How to turn Singapore into a cashless society when things like this can happen.”

The user added that his father was stuck at a petrol station for more than 30 minutes as customers were unable to pay.

Retailers and service providers ST spoke to said the service disruption did not cause a big drop in their sales revenue on Saturday.

In response to queries, a Foodpanda spokesman said the food and grocery delivery service experienced a “single-digit percentage decrease” in orders during the disruption, compared with the average number of orders usually seen on other Saturdays.

He added that customers can pay in many ways, including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayLah!, and cash on delivery.

He said: “We work closely with our payment partners on their scheduled maintenance schedule so that we are able to share that information on our Help Center in advance.”

The disruption, which also prevented customers from withdrawing cash from DBS and POSB automated teller machines, resulted in a “few of our customers” having to abandon their shopping baskets, said a FairPrice Group spokesman.

He added: “Customers with no other means of payment were understandably upset as they were inconvenienced.”

The spokesman declined to reveal if there was a drop in sales revenue because of the disruption.

A Sheng Siong spokesman said customers were “largely able to make payments using other payment means”, and that the supermarket chain plans to work with multiple payment providers to offer more options to customers.