NAB IT outage cuts payments

National Australia Bank (NAB) experienced a major IT outage overnight that delayed payments for potentially "millions" of customers.

iTnews has contacted the bank for further comment on the exact cause of the outage.

Bank spokesman George Wright told Radio 3AW that "all types of payments had been affected" by the four-hour systems outage.

He said it had caused delays in processing Centrelink payments, credit card payments, salaries and interbank transactions.

"It would have affected payments for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of customers," he said.

Wright said the delays were caused by "an issue in the technology area" of the bank, which he said had now been identified.

But he said customers would experience "significant delays" in payment processing today.

"We're working as hard as we can to get through it," he said.

Wright also said he "hoped" that NAB would cover any dishonour fees caused by payments not being processed but said he couldn't "make a blanket commitment".

He asked customers that had been charged fees to contact the NAB directly.

Update 5.58PM Thursday: "We've progressed with processing delayed payments/transactions and expect funds to be available late tonight/early tomorrow morning," the bank said on its Twitter feed.