CAF Bank has told its charity customers that its online service is now available after it shut down for over 10 days following an “attempted fraud”.
The bank announced on its website this morning that while its online service is available for the first time since 24 July, there could still be some disruption for customers.
“Please note there may be times when we need to limit the amount of traffic to the website,” it said.
“There are likely to be some periods where online banking isn’t available, which we’ll try to keep to outside business hours.
“We’re sorry for the impact that the disruption to the online service has had on customers.”
Some of CAF Bank’s 14,000 charity customers reported being unable to pay staff and suppliers during the outage and facing hours-long telephone waits for assistance.
More than 60 charity leaders co-signed an open letter urging the bank to produce an improved contingency plan.
CAF Bank, a subsidiary of the Charities Aid Foundation, has repeatedly apologised for the outage that began after the bank detected “attempted fraudulent activity on some accounts”, which it told customers was “caught quickly”.
Alison Taylor, CAF Bank’s chief executive, previously said the activity sparked an investigation, in which it identified “vulnerability in third-party software” and subsequently suspended its online service.
As a “thank you for your patience”, the bank offered to waive a monthly fee of about £5 per account for its affected customers, a move deemed insufficient by charities Civil Society spoke to yesterday.
The Financial Conduct Authority last week confirmed that it was “actively engaging” with CAF Bank and other regulatory authorities.
