As the conflict between Iran and the US escalates, a significant warning has been issued for customers of two major banks in the Gulf region. The ongoing war has triggered disruptions to banking apps and payment services, causing outages that have affected thousands of users, including around 200,000 UK nationals living in Gulf states.
The service interruptions were caused by drone strikes targeting Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These attacks have directly impacted banking providers ADCB and Emirates NBD, according to recent reports.
On the AWS Health Dashboard, the company confirmed the outages remain ongoing and emphasized their recovery efforts. In an update issued at 8:14am PST, AWS stated, “We continue to make progress on recovery efforts across multiple workstreams. We strongly recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.”
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Mobile and web apps of Alaan were temporarily offline due to a “critical AWS outage caused by the ongoing regional situation,” though the message was later removed. ADCB tweeted, “Due to a recent region-wide IT disruption, the ADCB Mobile Banking App and Contact Centre services are temporarily unavailable.”
AWS further revealed the extent of damage: “In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike near one of our facilities caused physical impact to infrastructure. These strikes caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery, and fire suppression efforts led to additional water damage.”
Amidst the escalating conflict, the UK Foreign Office announced a Labour Party government charter flight departing from Muscat, Oman, at 7 pm on Wednesday evening. The flight is available to British nationals, their partners, and children under 18 holding valid travel documents who wish to leave the region.
The unfolding situation highlights the broader consequences that geopolitical conflicts can have on essential digital infrastructure and everyday financial services relied upon by millions in the region.