BNP Paribas systems 'tombés à l'eau' in France for over 24hrs

Outage hits websites, apps, international payments

French bank BNP Paribas's systems have been down for more than 24 hours in its home nation, with customers complaining they can't transfer money or access the website or app.

The issues at the bank – one of the largest in the world – were first acknowledged by the group over 24 hours ago, at 8.10am UTC yesterday on Twitter. The latest update – at 11.16am UTC this morning – said that websites and applications were still not functional.

Reports have been rolling into DownDetector, with peaks of more than 400 reports yesterday afternoon and again this morning at about 8am.

Users took to social media to complain about the incident – which follows another similarly long outage in January – saying they couldn't use online banking, make transfers or online payments.

Retour à la normale en début d'après-midi ? 🤔
Et pas de problèmes avec les paiements en carte ? Pour 3 cartes sur 3 comptes (2 boîtes et 1 perso) et incidents de paiement sur incidents de paiement… 🙄
2 fois en trois mois, la décence voudrait qu'on ai un geste commercial… pic.twitter.com/Yci3NCHHQs

— zmo (@guyzmo) March 7, 2019

One customer claimed it was possible ATM withdrawals had been affected.

Second time in two months that @BNPParibas is down for more than half a day.

People don't have access to their bank accounts, and can't process wire transfers nor online paiements (I believe withdraws at ATMs are interrupted too).

Trustworthy.

— Pierre (@fle_pie) March 8, 2019

The bank said yesterday that there had been a "general incident" on its websites, mobile apps and in its agencies.

Chers clients , nous rencontrons un incident général sur nos sites , applications mobiles et dans nos agences .
Nos équipes techniques travaillent à sa résolution. Nous vous prions de nous excuser pour la gêne occasionnée. pic.twitter.com/sAWSuL4bAK

— BNP Paribas SAV (@BNPParibas_SAV) March 7, 2019

This morning's update said that services had been restored in the agencies and that international transfers were working.

However, websites and applications were still not functional, with various Twitter users sharing the error messages on their apps.

Ça continue 8h55 🤬 pic.twitter.com/FbuA2avZU7

— Domi (@huuri_can) March 8, 2019

The same was true for the bank's French websites, which declared that its technical teams were working to resolve an "ongoing incident".

Classe pic.twitter.com/Rb7KxyN1Zu

— zmo (@guyzmo) March 8, 2019

However, there is little more information about what has gone wrong at the bank and customers expressed disappointment at the lack of communication as they were unable to access their services for more than 24 hours.

@BNPParibas_SAV hey, when will the service available? it's about 1 day downtime right now.. pretty hard to trust a bank company that doesn't communicate well to the customers...

— Attila Gonda (@pcdevil) March 8, 2019

A recent study in the UK showed that banks on these shores were hit by IT crises at a rate of more than one a day, which has led to probes from Parliament and regulators.

The French website of BNP Paribas, a major tennis sponsor, had just come back online at the time of publication.

We have contacted BNP Paribas for comment and will update this story when it replies. ®