The mobile banking of CABS Bank went offline today and people were not able to use the mobile banking platform to make transactions. CABS has sent out a notice to people who use the bank notifying them that the technical challenges that the mobile banking platform is facing are not their fault.
CABS attributes the technical fault to Econet who is their service provider for the mobile banking platform. According to CABS, they or rather Econet is working on bringing back the mobile banking platform to full capacity. Earlier this week, Econet themselves faced problems with their mobile money platform EcoCash.
EcoCash was down for almost a whole day and it left most people stranded as they couldn’t make payments for the goods that they use on a day to day basis or for other daily needs. After some time had passed during the EcoCash outage, Econet then acknowledged that the service was indeed facing technical challenges and that they are working on solving them.
Since then EcoCash has been restored to normal functionality. So it kind of makes sense that CABS would blame Econet for the outage of their mobile banking platform given how Econet itself is facing problems with their own mobile money platform. Apart from that, the two have fought before when CABS wanted to have mobile banking and Econet was accused of unfair playing.
However, for a large institution like that, pointing fingers is definitely not the best way to keep the confidence of your customers.
If CABS would have just owned the technical faults as being their cause, not many people would have wondered otherwise. What do you think? Should they have pointed the finger to Econet? Most often, we want answers to why a system that we use often is down so are they justified for giving that reason?
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Similar message from FBC:
Please note that Econet USSD (*220#) is intermittently failing on mobile moola. The mobile network provider is aware of this issue and they are resolving the challenge.
I don’t know how many Zimbabweans realize how much the whole payments/data comms infrastructure/service relies on EW, right through to vehicle satellite tracking, live cctv via internet etc. It is probably frustration which gets a service provider to blame another especially if their systems are daisy-chained and can’t get a simple answer on where the problem lies or how long it will take to resolve. It does take quite a bit to get EW to own up at times. My take is EW have bitten much much more than they can chew, swallow. or spit. They happen to be the better option from the rest at present. How many companies which rely on EW service/infrastructure have SLAs with EW? You’ll be surprised.
all of the banks do but it begs the question of redundancey EWZ can handle the traffic i seriously doubt they couldnt if you look at their infrustruce they are well equipped for any failures probably problems with the banks IT infrustruce
I totally agree, EW has an unhealthy monopoly on the ICT backbone. Unfortunately USSD banking is based on the individual’s registered line. During this particular time, anyone who’s registered line is Telecel/Netone isn’t facing problems with mobile banking. EW is congested and they don’t know what to do with themselves.
Failed to register
As a client I have a contract with Cabs if a third party they have a contract with has an issue the best is to accept the problem as Cabs problem to the client not a third party
exactly
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