SA airlines see glitches, Capitec and Absa say services restored after global cyber outage

Services of Capitec Bank and Absa have been fully restored after experiencing disruptions early on Friday, the companies said, as a software update wreaked havoc on computer systems globally.

Capitec said it experienced significant disruptions in all its banking channels early in the morning, citing a global downtime incident involving cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

“We reassure our clients their bank accounts and personal data remain secure and unaffected by this incident,” the bank said.

Absa said in a post on X its digital banking channels, point-of-sale services and ATMs are all functional and access to its rewards hub is restored.

The bank, which also operates in Africa, added the technical matter relating to the global outage has been resolved.

SAA said in a post on X it was experiencing an intermittent technical outage at its contact centre, meaning customers contacting the airline for new bookings, changes or ancillary purchases would experience a longer hold time.

Privately-owned regional airline Airlink also informed its customers in a post on X that its IT network, including telephone lines, was down due to the global network outage.

Customers of FlySafair were struggling to pay for flights with their bank cards on its website, with the low-cost airline responding on X that the “technical issues are affecting all card payments”.

Reuters