Osko payments issue impacts Westpac

Some Westpac customers were impacted by an unspecified issue involving secure payment service Osko early Monday morning.

The near real-time payment platform is built on the New Payments Platform (NPP) and enables quick payments to other payment platforms such as PayID or traditional BSB and account number-based transfers.

Osko is operated by the Australian Payments Plus (AP+). AP+ brings together BPAY Group, eftpos and NPP Australia following a 2021 merge of the organisations.

A spokesperson for AP+ said that “earlier this morning, Westpac reported an issue with their processing of NPP payments including Osko payments.

“From an ecosystem perspective, the rest of the NPP was unaffected and continued to process NPP payments.

“The NPP was intentionally designed so if one participating organisation is experiencing issues, all other NPP participating organisations can continue to operate as normal.

The AP+ spokesperson said Westpac “was able to restore the processing of NPP payments at 10.02am and AP+ continues to monitor the situation.”

A Westpac spokesperson told iTnews the bank is now “running as normal following a brief issue earlier this morning with some Osko payments. No other services were impacted.”

Earlier in the month, Bank of Queensland and its ME Bank arm also both faced Osko-related issues.

While the issues have since been resolved, BoQ posted on its social media page it was “working through an issue causing delays to funds transfers made into and out of myBOQ accounts”.

ME Bank posted similar sentiments on its social page in early October, before saying that “funds transfers are back up and running” the following day.