Urgent transfers not possible - that's behind the Postbank breakdown

For Postbank customers, the turn of the year was anything but smooth. At times, they were unable to withdraw money or pay at checkout terminals. Accounts no longer appeared in online banking, and urgent transfers failed. "1. Official act in 2023 – cancel Postbank,” a supposed customer said angrily via the short message service Twitter.

Although the bank had warned its customers that online banking would not be available for three days between the years, the offer should only run again in the new design from Monday at 2 p.m. In fact, it didn't even then. Between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., consumers reported six times as many problems as usual. This is shown by figures from the consumer portal “All disturbances”.

Even on Tuesday, the unrest among customers was still great. "We are currently receiving a lot of calls, so it takes a little longer for you to get through to an employee," the bank said. A number of Postbank customers reported on Twitter that some accounts were still missing in the new online banking.

As a result, an IT conversion, which had repeatedly been noticed before due to delays and problems, finally turned into a debacle for Deutsche Bank and its subsidiary, which was taken over 14 years ago.

In last year's annual report, Deutsche Bank had already pointed out the risks of the IT conversion, which is known internally as UNITY - including possible "functionality problems in the updated applications or the underlying technology".

However, the bank asserted in the document that these risks would be "carefully managed" when the IT systems of both institutions were merged. From Postbank's point of view, that is exactly what has been done. "All bank applications and customer channels were able to open as planned during Monday," the institute said.

The problems afterwards had nothing to do with the actual system changeover, but with the high number of accesses. Due to the very high customer usage at the beginning of the year, there were "temporary performance and log-in difficulties for some of the users".

There were also short-term restrictions on SEPA transfers for some customers. Both have now been resolved, the bank said. We regret the inconvenience associated with “these individual restrictions”.

While the institute is apparently slowly getting its technology under control, the next problem is already apparent: customers are dissatisfied with the innovations. The new app is even more spartan than its predecessor. Only the query of account transactions and simple transfers are possible at the start of the new offer.

That's significantly less than the competition. The rudimentary functions are an "absolute impudence to the customer," complains a user on social media. Others even call it “a disgrace for the Postbank”.

Most recently, there were no more innovations in the old online banking. The Postbank app was way ahead of the pack a few years ago: Even before the smartphone payment offers from Google and Apple were launched in Germany, Postbank customers could use their app to pay at credit card terminals, for example.

But those days are long gone: Postbank doesn't even offer Apple Pay at the moment. When asked, Postbank did not answer which functions are planned for the near future. Just this much: The change now marks an “important milestone in the overall program”, which should be completed by the middle of the year.

Apps are increasingly seen as a differentiating factor for banks. Providers like N26 aggressively advertise that they have a better grip on the technology. And even a banking app from DKB, which is still in the beta phase, already offers more than the new Postbank solution, for which the Bonn-based company has been preparing for a long time.

According to the market researchers at YouGov, it is primarily millennials, i.e. people between the ages of 25 and 34, who use bank apps. Almost 70 percent of the age group manages their finances with mobile applications, as a study from the summer shows.

But even among those over 55, slightly more than every second person has downloaded a banking app. The applications are no longer only used to display the account balance. According to a survey, three quarters also use them to make transfers, and more than every second person manages standing orders. And every third person already uses apps to contact the bank.

But it's not just the smartphone app that's still stuck at Postbank. Credit card functions are also missing in online banking. Not even the sales of the cards are visible.

The Postbankers came up with an unusual interim solution for this: As early as mid-November, they announced to customers by e-mail that they would have to register on a specially created credit card platform for an unspecified “transitional period”. This is the only place where customers can find the credit card transactions - and only here can they approve payments for online banking.

To do this, Postbank uses its own security procedure: customers are to release payments via SMS TAN, i.e. via a code sent to their mobile phone via SMS. The modern security procedure that Postbank has been using for several years does not work here: "Approvals with BestSign are temporarily not possible," writes the bank.

For the parallel credit card platform, customers must first register with an activation code sent by letter. In addition, there have been other letters in recent weeks - for example with new terms and conditions for the depot.

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