Web Desk: Pakistan’s digital banking sector faced renewed disruption on Tuesday after fintech firm SadaPay said its mobile application went offline for users, linking the outage to wider infrastructure damage affecting cloud services in the Gulf region amid escalating regional tensions.
In a statement posted on social media, SadaPay said its platform had become unavailable after technical failures in its hosting environment, which relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure based in Bahrain.
The company said conditions in the affected region deteriorated following drone strikes on March 1, which it described as the initial trigger for instability in the network. It added that the situation worsened overnight, resulting in a complete outage of its application services.
SadaPay stressed that the disruption was not caused by an internal system failure but stemmed from external damage affecting shared cloud infrastructure used by multiple financial services across the region.
Despite the app shutdown, the fintech said customer funds remained secure and fully accounted for. It also confirmed that debit card usage, ATM withdrawals, and point-of-sale transactions were still functioning normally.
The company apologised for the disruption and said its technical teams were working urgently to restore services, while acknowledging inconvenience faced by users.
SadaPay said the incident reflected broader vulnerabilities affecting digital financial platforms that depend on cross-border cloud infrastructure.
The outage comes as tensions continue to rise in the Middle East, where Iran, the United States, and Israel have been engaged in sustained exchanges of missile and drone strikes, resulting in damage to critical infrastructure across the region.
Although SadaPay did not directly link the geopolitical situation to the outage, it noted that financial service providers operating in the Gulf were experiencing cascading effects from physical disruptions to shared technology systems.
The latest disruption follows a separate system fault reported days earlier, when SadaPay acknowledged incorrect account deductions and negative balances affecting some users. The company later apologised and assured customers that all discrepancies would be corrected.
At the time, it reiterated that user funds remained safe, while promising improvements to system stability and transparency.
The repeated disruptions have highlighted the increasing dependence of Pakistan’s fintech sector on overseas cloud infrastructure, raising concerns over resilience during periods of regional instability.
As the company works to restore full functionality, it said it remains focused on ensuring service continuity and safeguarding user confidence in its digital banking platform.
Read more: Meta announces $1,000 to $3,000 monthly incentive for facebook creators
