THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Monday (Oct 2) that it is working with DBS to find the root cause of the disruption to the lender’s Fast And Secure Transfers (Fast) and PayNow services on Sep 26.

In response to The Business Times’ (BT) queries about the service standards expected of banks, a MAS spokesperson said it “expects banks to have the ability to recover quickly from any system disruption, and to address and resolve the impact to customers swiftly and transparently”.

The regulator added that it is following up with the bank on finding the root cause of the incident, as well as its handling of affected customers and transactions.

DBS customers who used Fast or PayNow services in the afternoon on Sep 26 saw that their transactions were held in a pending status.

While full service resumed on the same day, reconciliation of the pending transactions were only fully processed on Sep 29.

Transactions were also processed inconsistently, with some completed successfully while others failed. This caused confusion among bank customers and retailers who relied on the service to handle payments.

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DBS : D05 0% last traded flat at S$33.64 before the midday break on Monday.

PayNow was introduced in June 2017 by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) as a peer-to-peer funds transfer service. It allowed customers from seven participating banks to make payments through Fast using their mobile numbers or National Registration Identity Card numbers.

BT has reached out to ABS for comment.