State Bank of India Internet Banking Services Hit By Technical Issues

​The country’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), faced major hiccups in its Internet banking services, namely mobile banking, fund transfer, and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, on April 1, 2025. Starting around 12:30 PM IST, these problems caused a large number of customers to face inconvenience while also highlighting problems experienced by banks in this part of the year, as the annual financial year-end is nearing.​

Scheduled Annual Closing Activities

Earlier, SBI had announced that it is going to keep its digital services down between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM IST on April 1, 2025, to facilitate annual closing activities. It is an important period for banks to settle accounts and get ready for the new year in their financial calendar. But technical issues began earlier in the day and caused surprising interruptions. ​

Scope of the Disruption

Reports said the technical problems affected such services as follows:​

• The majority of reported issues were, in fact, mobile banking related, accounting for an approximate 64%, and the users were reported to have had trouble accessing their accounts and making their transactions.​
• About 33 percent of complaints related to problem with fund transfers, such as delays and failed transaction.​
• Issues relating to ATM Services were 3% of all the issues recorded, as users experienced inability to withdraw cash or accessing some functionality on the ATMs. ​

Official Statements and Customer Guidance

In this special situation where service disruptions happened, SBI released official communication (letter) to its customers to educate them and guide them properly.

The bank (SBI) also announced that the Internet Banking services will be unavailable during the closing period as the bank informed its customers of the discontinuation of few digital services during the closing period and advised them to go for UPI LTE facility and ATM channels to remain connected. ​

In line with this, the National Payments Corporation of India said the UPI system was working well while the transaction declines were due to the process of closing the financial year end. ​

Customer Experiences and Feedback

The service disruption reached a point where customers took to social media platforms to vent their anger.

• User Reports: A lot of users faced the issues regarding the usage of mobile banking and funds transfer and hence couldn’t complete the transactions or retrieve accounts for themselves.​
• Outages: Users presented the chance that outages may create inconvenience particularly in the crucial transaction periods.​

Recommendations for Affected Customers

SBI recommends the following in case of customers affected by the service disruptions:

• During service downtimes, transactions less than a certain amount will use UPI Lite while ATM would be used for cash withdrawals and basic banking needs. ​
• If any of the customer faces any unauthorized electronic transactions, then they should immediately contact SBI customer care through the below mentioned channels:⁠

• Toll-Free Numbers: 1800 11 1109 or 94491 12211​
• Email: report.phishing@sbi.co.in​

Conclusion

The incidents of technical problems that the State Bank of India (SBI) encountered on April 1, 2025, illustrate the growing complexities and vulnerabilities of banks handling concurrent workloads for year end closing, or system reconciliations, among other such events. While scheduled downtimes are often notified to customers in good time, technical disruptions resulting in temporary service outages can still occur, radically affecting both individual and business customers.

Given this, customers are advised to continue to be on high alert and follow the information from the bank’s website, mobile phone application and verified social media handles. Besides, customers are also advised to manage their essential banking transactions ahead of such periods themselves along with utilizing alternate channels like ATMs, net banking, UPI, and mobile wallet, where available.

To avoid inconvenience due to such system outages, the customers can better manage disruptions by adopting a proactive approach and keeping access to multiple banking options. In the same vein, financial institutions need to develop resilient IT infrastructure and crisis management protocols to maintain public trust and resume service delivery in the shortest time possible.