KUALA LUMPUR (April 9): Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) and CIMB Malaysia have been ordered by the central bank to provide a thorough explanation over their recent banking service outages.

"Bank Negara Malaysia takes a serious view of the recent banking services outages by two of our largest banking institutions which have caused disruptions and inconvenience to customers," BNM said in a statement on Tuesday.

It said it has asked the two banks to "provide a full explanation of the root cause leading to the incidents, as well as corrective and preventive measures undertaken to avoid a recurrence of similar issues".

BNM said the banks have also been instructed to ensure appropriate communication with affected customers, including promptly addressing any complaints and inquiries arising from the outage, and providing timely updates on affected services.

"BNM expects all banking institutions to maintain high availability of banking services at all times," the central bank said. "BNM will not hesitate to take further supervisory actions where banks have fallen short of our regulatory and supervisory expectations."

Earlier Tuesday, Maybank confirmed in a statement that it experienced disruptions affecting its debit card, online banking, and ATM services on April 5. This temporarily hindered customers from making online payments as well as transactions at retail outlets.

The banking group apologised for the inconvenience faced by customers and assured that all services and apps are currently operating normally.

"We would like to assure our customers and stakeholders of our unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of customer experience and satisfaction," it said.

CIMB Malaysia also confirmed encountering two intermittent service disruptions on Monday and Tuesday. These disruptions affected CIMB Clicks, CIMB OCTO, FPX, MyDebit, credit transactions and self-service terminals.

The bank apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused, while reassuring customers that its core banking system and customer data remain secure and intact.