Commonwealth Bank customers have expressed their anger after a major outage left them unable to access ATMs, pay bills or get paid.

Key points: Affected services include BPAY, Netbank and the app, while some branches had to shut

Affected services include BPAY, Netbank and the app, while some branches had to shut They went down around midday, leaving customers caught short at checkouts across the country

They went down around midday, leaving customers caught short at checkouts across the country The Commonwealth Bank says it is working urgently to fix the "unknown" computer issue

Others were left embarrassed and forced to wait for hours after being unable to transfer money for haircuts, groceries or petrol.

One person described doing the "walk of shame" after having to leave their shopping behind.

The bank said an unknown computer issue was affecting some of its services, including BPAY, its online payment platform Netbank, and its app.

On Friday morning, it said it had restored most services but customers should expect delays on payments.

"We have been working to restore the network systems overnight and these are now returning to normal," it said in a statement.

"Some payments may be delayed appearing in accounts."

Some call centre and in-branch services were also down, causing some branches to temporarily close, the bank said.

Customers had been cut off from their accounts and cannot transfer money between them.

Cardless cash — a service which allows customers to withdraw from ATMs using the bank's smartphone app — was also unavailable.

ATMs and EFTPOS terminals were still working.

Many customers took to social media to vent their anger at being unable to pay for medication, rent and staff wages.

More than 3,000 people commented on the bank's Facebook account.

Loading

Janeya Louise Beazley said she had tried unsuccessfully to pay for her groceries, which were already bagged.

"Looking like a poor person that can't afford groceries is uncomfortable," she wrote.

Denise Rose Amor said she and her husband were leaving Japan and booked a taxi from the hotel to the airport using an app attached to her bank account.

"Arrived at the airport and the payment wouldn't process because of errors on Commbank's side," she said.

"The driver locked us in the taxi until we could find an alternative method of payment."

Ms Amor said she managed to pay the driver using a different card but could not be sure if she would be charged twice for the trip.

Others were not able to pay staff wages.



"Needing to pay staff and can't access any of my money. Not impressed," one woman said.

"I just went into your Werribee branch and everything's down.

"I can't access any of my money which is desperately needed."

'Can't leave until I transfer money'

Yasmine Rias went to Sydney's Haymarket branch to transfer money to go shopping but was told by staff that might not be possible until tomorrow.

"It's bit of a pain but what can you do," she said.

"I have a teenage jobseeker stranded 4 hours away in Sydney because we can't transfer money to him and I can't order my groceries online. Time to ration the toilet paper!" @cy_chrisy said.

Loading

"CommBank has officially made me wait at a petrol station," said @ommer.

"Can't leave until I can transfer my money."

Juleah Doornbusch was left fuming after finding herself in a similar predicament.

"Not happy, I've been stuck at the servo with two young children unable to transfer money from one account to another to pay for my fuel!" she said.

"All I got on the phone is 'I'm sorry'."

"I went to the barber and was literally stranded there for nothing because I was not able to transfer from saving to smart account," @wahaxoxo said.

Group executive of The Commonwealth Bank's Retail Bank Services, Angus Sullivan, said it could be "some hours" until all services were fully restored.

"On behalf of the bank I wanted to apologise for the inconvenience this is causing our customers," he said.

"I know an outage like this causes real inconvenience to our customers and I sincerely apologise for the impact."

Mr Sullivan said ATM and EFTPOS merchant facilities as well as credit cards were working, while some debit card payments may be affected.

He said the CommBank app and Netbank were available "with limited functionality" and 3,500 Bank@Post services were available nationwide at Australia Post.