HSBC Hong Kong Mobile Banking Hit by Second Major Outage in Six Months

HSBC’s mobile banking services in Hong Kong suffered a significant disruption on Monday morning, the second such failure in six months, leaving customers unable to access their accounts for several hours before services were restored in the early afternoon.

Customers began reporting technical difficulties logging into their accounts at 9 a.m., according to the South China Morning Post. The HSBC mobile application displayed an error message stating, "access is restricted until we have your valid email address and mobile number," which users said appeared even though their contact details were already registered. The outage also affected the mobile app of HSBC’s subsidiary, Hang Seng Bank.

HSBC later confirmed the issue was resolved. "All our services returned to normal before 2 p.m. today [1 p.m. Hanoi time]," the bank stated in an email to Reuters. "We again apologise for any inconvenience caused." The lender did not disclose the cause of the technical problem or the number of customers impacted.

This incident follows a similar breakdown in January, when HSBC's mobile app and online services were unavailable for several hours. In June 2022, the mobile banking and wealth management applications for both HSBC and Hang Seng Bank, along with their ATMs, were suspended for approximately two hours.

As Hong Kong's largest lender, HSBC serves over 7 million customers in a city with a population of around 7.5 million. The bank has heavily promoted its digital platforms. Last month, HSBC Hong Kong CEO Maggie Ng noted that 63% of clients had used its digital apps this year to open accounts, apply for credit cards, or open time deposits, while 86% had used digital channels for stock and fund product purchases.

Other financial institutions in the city have also faced network shutdowns, including a temporary disconnection of Chong Hing Bank’s website and hotlines in April 2024 and an outage of Bank of East Asia’s in-person banking services in 2021.