If you are unable to access internet banking or mobile banking service, a check on the recently launched national portal for monitoring availability of banks’ digital services – SEWA (Service Availability Web Page) – may help you ascertain if there is a problem with your bank’s IT system or your personal device (desktop/laptop/mobile).
The Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) has put together SEWA, which went live mid-January, to empower customers with information about the availability of digital banking services on real-time basis.
The Association, at the Reserve Bank of India’s behest, has started a dashboard on the SEWA portal, wherein customers can know about the availability of six digital services like Internet Banking (INB), Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Unified Payments Service (UPI) and Mobile Banking of various banks 24X7.
Status report
The status of the digital banking service availability is classified under five heads – service available, service unavailable, scheduled downtime, status unavailable and service fluctuation.
Currently, nine banks – Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Airtel Payments Bank, Canara Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and the State Bank of India – are part of this centralised platform. More are expected to join in the next few months.
Building trust
The portal updates service status information as and when it receives information from banks. The data is refreshed every 10 minutes to provide accurate and up-to-date information about scheduled maintenance windows, system updates and any unplanned outages or service disruptions.
By providing crucial information about availability of digital banking services of various banks, the SEWA platform is trying to ensure that customers are able to plan financial transactions around scheduled maintenance window, have enhanced trust and confidence in digital banking channels and improved banking experience by avoiding frustration caused by unexpected service disruption.
The objective of SEWA is to promote transparency in the financial sector, encourage high standards of service availability and communication from banks, and effective management of customer expectations during service outages and downtimes.