The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is experiencing a major systems failure impacting operations across the country. All of the state-owned lender's over 1,950 branches have been paralyzed since early Saturday morning.
In a social media statement, CBE acknowledged "service disruptions" but provided few details on the technical issues or restoration timeline. Sources familiar with the bank's infrastructure told BirrMetrics the problems stem from the core banking platform that processes transactions.
"There seem to be debit and credit reconciliation problems on customer accounts. The system is simply not posting transactions accurately," said one staff member, who asked not to be named.
Frustrated customers vented on social media about being unable to access funds via ATMs, mobile banking or in-person at branches. Some claimed the outage had already caused missed payments and late fees.
The full scope and root cause of the outage remains unclear. One banking analyst said other lenders are also experiencing a similar outage due to aging hardware and software in need of upgrades.
"CBE is long overdue for core system modernization. This type of widespread disruption will seriously damage customers' trust in the bank," added the analyst, who declined to be identified.
CBE leadership remained tight-lipped on how quickly full service would resume.
It has been over three months since system-wide disruptions first brought services to a halt across CBE’s entire branch network. The state-owned lender continues to struggle with nationwide outages affecting both digital and in-person banking.
A source said the bank identified "suspicious patterns of funds transfers occurring across multiple customer accounts in different regions of the country." As a precaution, the bank shut off all digital and in-person services starting Saturday to contain any potential damage and investigate the source of intrusions, the same source said.
Another source inside CBE indicate the root cause lies with the Temenos T24 R17 core banking platform, which was rolled out in 2020. Despite the extensive implementation process and subsequent maintenance, the upgrade has failed to deliver a stable and secure infrastructure.
The unresolved problems continue straining CBE's relationship with its over 30 million clients. Missed bill payments, late fees, and restricted access to cash have taken both an economic and personal toll on Ethiopians dependent on the bank's services.