(Story updated on 4 December after old app was restored on IOS and Android Play Store)
HDFC Bank has restored its old mobile banking app following complaints of its new app not being accessible to customers. It has taken the bank five days to fix it, but it still hasn’t been able to. Hence, following demands from its customers it has brought its old app back.
HDFC Bank’s mobile-banking app has been taken down from the Android Play Store and IOS App Store after it crashed on 29 November, hours after its launch. It hasn’t reappeared since. Here’s a brief video of what transpired.
The ‘next-gen’ app that HDFC Bank introduced, replacing its older banking app was to have improvements like biometric login and face recognition. It also promised a simpler user interface.
However, HDFC Bank, India’s largest private bank by assets, made one crucial mistake. It did not test the app enough. So much so, the HDFC Banking app just disappeared from the phones of many users and those who still have it cannot log in.
The bank has more than 24 million customers, of which nearly 85 percent were using mobile banking services. They don’t have access to the app now and the bank wants them to use netbanking instead.
The bank is restoring its old app, after users took to Twitter to vent their ire at the inconvenience caused. It is still fixing bugs with its new app and has just sent a notice to users saying “Sorry we let you down.”
There are worries there could be a larger data breach too, but the bank has said not to believe those rumours and it’s purely a technical issue right now. It has been down for four days now, but the bank isn’t saying what exactly went wrong. It only sticks to its stand of it being a technical issue.
Who developed the app? The play store names only HDFC Bank as the developer. And there are just so many HDFC apps for different purposes on the play store, it’s a bit confusing.
Meanwhile, users still aren’t able to login and have been forced to use Netbanking on the web.
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