Commonwealth Bank Outage Halts Online Banking, ATMs Across Australia

When Matt Comyn, CEO of Commonwealth Bank of Australia issued a public apology on Thursday, October 3, 2025, the nation was still trying to complete lunch‑hour transactions that had been stymied by a sudden, nationwide outage affecting the bank’s digital channels.

What Happened

The glitch struck at roughly 12:00 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time, taking down the CommBank mobile app, online banking portal, and the entire ATM network spanning all states and territories. Within 45 minutes, the bank’s official service status page posted its first statement confirming a “widespread service disruption.” By 2:30 p.m., a second update announced full restoration.

Timeline of the Outage

• 12:00 p.m. – Systems begin failing across core banking platform.
• 12:45 p.m. – Commonwealth Bank releases its first public acknowledgement.
• 1:30 p.m. – Technical teams work round‑the‑clock; customer complaints surge on social media.
• 2:30 p.m. – Full functionality restored; second statement confirms services are back online.

Customer Impact

During the roughly 2½‑hour window, an estimated 1.2 million customers reported being unable to make payments, including essential purchases such as groceries. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation noted that while no physical branches were forced to close, many reported temporary shutdowns as staff focused on resolving the digital freeze.

One Sydney commuter, who asked to remain unnamed, told 7NEWS Australia, “I tried to pay for my sandwich on the train and the app just kept loading. I ended up handing cash to the driver – it felt like stepping back into 1995.”

Market Reaction

Despite the operational hiccup, Commonwealth Bank of Australia shares (ASX: CBA) surged 1.65 % on the day, outpacing the broader S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO), which rose 1.13 %. This lift extended a weekly gain of nearly 4 % that had begun earlier in the month.

Financial analysts were quick to point out that the stock’s resilience may reflect investor confidence in the bank’s long‑term earnings power, even as Bernd Struben of The Motley Fool warned the price remains “well above fair‑value assessments.”

Possible Causes and Expert Views

The bank has not disclosed a root‑cause analysis, but sources cited by The Australian suggest a technical fault in the core processing engine, rather than a cyber‑attack, was the likely trigger. Dr. Lisa McCormick, a fintech analyst at the Australian Institute of Finance, said, “Modern banks run on tightly coupled ecosystems; a single code deployment glitch can cascade across mobile, web, and ATM layers within minutes.”

In comparison, a similar outage hit Westpac in August 2024, lasting roughly 90 minutes and causing a 0.8 % dip in its share price. The quicker recovery and market rally for CBA this time hint at lessons learned and perhaps more robust contingency planning.

Looking Ahead: Preventing Future Outages

Following the incident, the bank’s digital chief disclosed plans to introduce a “zero‑downtime” architecture for critical services by the end of 2026. The rollout will involve migrating legacy workloads to a cloud‑native platform hosted by a diversified set of providers, mitigating the single‑point‑failure risk that seemed to surface on October 3.

Customers can also expect enhancements to the virtual assistant “Ceba,” which will now push proactive outage alerts via push notifications, reducing uncertainty during future disruptions.