Westpac officials said the bank had been experiencing problems with the Web site all week, prompting the information technology staff to reboot the system. This follows problems with the Westpac DeskBank system, which saw some corporate customers unable to process payrolls.
The most recent problems could affect up to 1.48 million people who have registered to conduct online banking with Westpac.
"Following a degraded service this week, which from a customers point of view means it was patchy...we have decided to take the site down as of 12.15pm today and refresh the system," Westpac spokesperson Julia Quinn told ZDNet Australia .
Quinn said the Westpac Internet banking site normally had high levels of traffic on Fridays, but today it was higher than usual. "It highlighted a problem that we've got with two systems talking to each other," she said. "We've identified where the problem is, but we're still looking for the precise problem."
The site was running again after about an hour, according to Quinn, and Westpac expects the immediate problem to be fixed. "We still have to investigate what the actual problem was, and those investigations will be ongoing," said Quinn.
More than 70,000 customers have registered for Westpac's online banking since August.
