Customers of Doha Bank were unable to withdraw money or pay for purchases using their debit card for much of Wednesday to a technical failure that some say has lasted more than 15 hours.
The outage, which some customers said started late Tuesday evening, came at a particularly inopportune time for many residents who are paid at the end of the month and need access to their salary to pay bills.
A customer service representative said she expected access to be restored by 1:30pm but was unable to provide any additional information about the nature of the problem.
However, that target passed without the network coming back online. Shortly after 3pm, the bank tweeted that it was still working on fixing the problem:
Dear Valued Customers, we apologize for the inconvenience. We are working towards resolving the system related problem ASAP.
— Doha Bank (@DohaBankQatar) July 1, 2015
For the moment, however, the bank’s customers are unable to access their account online or use their card at ATMs or at retailers’ point-of-sale terminals, according Doha Bank’s website.
That’s caused considerable frustration for some residents:
@DohaBankQatar what happened still the services are not up? Today could not pay visa fee in MOI, big embarrassment
— Abhishek Mishra (@mishranomics) July 1, 2015
@dohanews when at the checkout counter at 11:30pm my card won’t work.. It said “do not honour”… Awesome service by @DohaBankQatar
— shamim (@sha4u143) July 1, 2015
Doha Bank service annoys since morning. No ATM, No Online Login even their Customer Care not working. @qatarday @DohaBankQatar @dohanews — Fawmy Samad ® (@Fawmy) July 1, 2015
Have you been affected by the outage? Thoughts?