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UPDATE: NRC.next finds claims about bank outages unfounded

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“A whole series of media outlets reported this week that ING was supposedly the world leader in bank outages. The source? Research by the Allestoringen.nl website. It scans the web for complaints, including on social media, and uses these to infer when an outage occurs. However, the site refuses to disclose its method. The international comparison is also questionable at best. We consider the media reports unfounded.”

That was the conclusion of NRC.next’s fact-checkers (in Dutch). Allestoringen.nl’s picture of bank outages was based on social media and, according to the Dutch Payments Association, did not reflect reality. All major banks now report the availability of their online banking services every month. In November, availability at the three largest banks was well above 99%, including at ING. September and October showed a similar picture.

For Dutch banks, every outage is one too many. The banks therefore continuously worked to make their online services as widely available as possible. Their availability reports were based on technical facts, not sentiment on social media.

At the end of November, the National Forum on the Payment System (NFPS) said of the banks’ efforts: “Work to improve the robustness of banks’ systems is bearing fruit and continues without interruption. […] Substantial progress has been made in reducing the vulnerability of iDEAL and debit card payments to disruptions. The NFPS is closely monitoring further improvements and asks the banks to make their objectives in this area more ambitious.” NFPS participants included DNB, the Dutch Banking Association, the Dutch Payments Association, the Dutch Consumers’ Association, Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, MKB-Nederland, Detailhandel Nederland and Thuiswinkel.org.

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