Services of South African lenders Capitec Bank and Absa, and airline Airlink, were fully restored after disruptions early on Friday, the companies said, after a software update wreaked havoc on computer systems globally.
The update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to have triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced some broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.
Capitec said it experienced significant disruptions across all of its banking channels early on Friday morning.
“Importantly, we want to reassure our clients that their bank accounts and personal data remain secure and unaffected by this incident,” the lender said in an emailed response to questions.
Absa said in a post on X that its digital banking channels, point-of-sale services and ATMs were all functional and access to its rewards hub was restored.
State-owned SAA said on X that it was experiencing an intermittent technical outage at its contact centre, meaning that customers seeking new bookings, changes or ancillary purchases would experience a longer hold time.
Privately-owned regional airline, Airlink, also informed its customers in a post on X that despite the outage, which affected its entire IT network including telephone lines, its flights were running on schedule.
Customers of FlySafair were struggling to pay for flights with their bank cards on its website, with the low-cost airline responding on X that “we are currently having payment issues due to the Microsoft outage”.
Airports Company South Africa, which owns and operates South Africa's nine principal airports, said in a statement that it does not use CrowdStrike services and therefore its “airport network remains unaffected by this outage with operations running as normal”.
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