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Enoch Yiu

HSBC and its subsidiary Hang Seng Bank had resumed mobile phone service operations by early Monday afternoon after an outage in the morning locked customers out of their accounts for several hours.
HSBC, the biggest lender in the city with over 7 million customers in Hong Kong, had its mobile banking service interrupted, with many customers complaining they could not log on to the system on Monday morning.
More than 10 HSBC customers contacted the South China Morning Post, saying they were unable to log into the mobile banking since 9am.
The mobile banking app showed messages that read “access is restricted” or that the app was “temporarily unavailable”.
The mobile banking app of Hang Seng Bank also could not be logged into from 9am.
By 2pm Monday, all mobile phone banking services had “returned to normal”, according to separate statements issued by the banks.
This is the second breakdown of the HSBC mobile banking system in six months. In January, the bank’s mobile app and online services were inactive for several hours.

Hong Kong resident Erica Wu was unable to log in to her HSBC app, even after trying for 15 minutes from 9.45am. She also tried to top up her PayMe account, HSBC’s peer-to-peer transfer app, but it did not work.
“I was so scared. I thought my HSBC account had been hacked,” Wu said. “Then I tried to call the bank’s hotlines, but all of them were not working. This made me even more worried.”
“Should we go to the bank branches to fix the problem?” asked Carol Luk, who could not access either mobile app since 9am.
“The bank said I have not given them my email or telephone number, so I cannot use the services. It sounds like a scam,” Luk said.
The incident did not dampen investor interest in the lender amid a rising market. Shares of HSBC Holdings closed at HK$145.80 on Monday, up 2.1 per cent, outperforming the Hang Seng Index which rose 0.5 per cent.
The system interruption came at a time when HSBC has been aggressively expanding its client base to match the city’s population of 7.5 million.
The Hong Kong office of the bank has already seen almost 2 million new customers sign up over the past two years, bringing its total customers to 7 million at the end of last year.
The lender is also adopting artificial intelligence to enhance its services. Effective April 1, HSBC appointed David Rice, previously chief operating officer for corporate and institutional banking, as its first chief AI officer.

HSBC Hong Kong CEO Maggie Ng said last month that 63 per cent of clients had used its digital banking apps to open accounts, apply for credit cards or open time deposits this year, while 86 per cent had used digital channels to buy stocks and fund products.
Since 2017, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has encouraged the city’s banks to adopt fintech tools as they attempt to catch up with their international competitors. HSBC, one of the city’s oldest lenders, launched PayMe in the same year. By the end of 2025, the payment platform had 3.2 million users.
“HSBC and Hang Seng Banks are now using mobile banking to serve millions of customers, and [everyday] banking functions have been moving from the branch network to mobile banking,” said Robert Lee Wai-wang, a lawmaker for the financial services sector and chairman of Grand Finance Group.
However, the repeated breakdowns had been inconvenient to customers “which is not ideal”, Lee added.
“All licensed banks in Hong Kong have a public duty to make sure they can provide digital banking services to customers. I hope HSBC and Hang Seng Bank can review their systems to prevent the breakdown from happening again.”
Monday’s incident was not the first network failure for HSBC or its subsidiaries. In January, the two lenders’ mobile app and online services were inactive for several hours.
In June 2022, the mobile banking and wealth management apps of both HSBC and Hang Seng Bank suspended services for about two hours, along with their ATMs.
Users of HSBC’s brokerage platform also reported an outage on the morning of October 7, 2024, while Hang Seng Bank’s mobile app suffered another malfunction in July 2025.
Other banks in the city have been hit by network shutdowns. Chong Hing Bank’s official website and hotlines were temporarily disconnected in April 2024, and the Bank of East Asia’s in-person banking services experienced an outage in 2021.


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HSBC and Hang Seng Bank at 2.30pm said all mobile banking services have resumed normal after customers were unable to access the mobile apps since 9am


HSBC and Hang Seng Bank at 2.30pm said all mobile banking services have resumed normal after customers were unable to access the mobile apps since 9am.


HSBC

Hang Seng Bank

HSBC, Hang Seng mobile apps restored after glitches locked out Hong Kong customers for hours

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}HSBC and Hang Seng Bank at 2.30pm said all mobile banking services have resumed normal after customers were unable to access the mobile apps since 9am

HSBC and Hang Seng Bank at 2.30pm said all mobile banking services have resumed normal after customers were unable to access the mobile apps since 9am