Tech snag has HDFC Bank pulling out its new mobile banking app; reverts to old from today

Mumbai: HDFC Bank pulled down its new mobile banking app six days after launching it. After over four days of out-of-bounds for customers due to technical glitches, which created an online furore against the bank, the largest private sector lender on Monday pulled down its troublemaking new mobile banking app. As an alternative, HDFC Bank said the affected customers will be able to use the old app from 1700 hrs from Tuesday (today).[caption id="attachment_3850563" align="alignleft" width="380"] Representational image. Reuters[/caption]"The new app, since it is taking us longer to fix than anticipated, is being pulled down from the app store (for Ios users) and Playstore (for Android users) till further notice," the bank having 4.5 crore customers said on its official Twitter handle.The trouble is believed to have begun last Thursday when the bank put out a Twitter statement saying the new app users are facing trouble logging in and will not be able to use it. The issue was possibly triggered while updating the app when the older version of the app was “overwritten” and a lot of customers could use neither the old nor the new app, which was malfunctioned, media reports said.Many users deleted the old app, leaving them with the only option of using alternatives like netbanking, phone-banking or missed call banking for their transactions. This led to a rash of voices against the bank, especially on the micro-blogging site Twitter. "In this day and age, how can the largest private bank in the country do this?!", wondered e-commerce giant Flipkart's co-founder Sachin Bansal. The timing of the app going down, during the time when salaries get credited and mobile banking transactions go up by at least a third of the average, led to many users feeling the pain because of the services being down. The exact details of the problem with the new app, or the time it will take for it to come back, are still notdisclosed.The bank had launched the older version of the app last Tuesday billing it as simple and institutive, which had features like biometric access for extra security.