At least thousands of Qatar National Bank (QNB) customers in Qatar found themselves suddenly unable to use their credit or debit cards at stores, restaurants and ATMS for several hours yesterday evening.
This morning, a QNB spokesperson told Doha News that the sudden outage was due to a “network issue,” causing a complete shutdown of all QNB banking services.
The spokesperson confirmed that the network is now up and running again, with the issue being resolved before midnight last night.
QNB was ranked the world’s strongest bank by Bloomberg in 2012, and has hundreds of thousands of customers in Qatar.
Customer response
QNB has not made any official announcement about the outage, leaving many customers frustrated with the inconveniences caused during their weekend.
On Twitter, many customers expressed their complaints:
QNB is down nationwide. I wasnot able to pay at the restaurant. It was embrassing. They didnt even notify. Bravo @QNBGroup @dohanews
— Erdal YAZICIOGLU (@chveneburo) October 17, 2014
@QNBGroup I've already done that.the only think he said was he is sorry.i am out off cash for weekend. How will QNB help on this? @dohanews
— Erdal YAZICIOGLU (@chveneburo) October 17, 2014
https://twitter.com/AminaAli1/status/523179098927939584
Meanwhile, non-QNB residents also faced payment difficulties yesterday, finding themselves unable to withdraw money from various ATMs located around the country:
@E_Windrum @dohanews most of the atms in wakrah didn't have cash in them yesterday 😐 ..
— الـتومي♓️ (@Atoowmii) October 18, 2014
@nat_high some people even abandoned their stuff at checkout and left, after being unable to withdraw cash from ATMs. I'm one of them 🙁
— . (@Myr_Naj) October 17, 2014
This is not the first time local residents have found themselves facing a sudden network outage. Regional HSBC customers have also been affected in the past, unable to use their cards for payments or at ATMs for several hours during the weekend.
Were you affected by any bank troubles yesterday?
Thoughts?
