PayMe services back to normal after it was down on Wednesday

HSBC's mobile payment service PayMe was down two days ago as users could not use some of its services. After almost a day, the service resumed normal and the bank apologised to its users. 

On 21 July, some users reported that when they open the PayMe app, the app asked them to try again later as it had some problems. Some of PayMe's services could not be used on that day, as users could not transfer money to peers, or the balance of some of their accounts was HK$0. After that, HSBC issued an email to all of its users, telling them that PayMe was currently unavailable and the bank was working on a fix and will be back soon. It apologised to its users for the inconvenience caused too. 

After Thursday midnight, the service of PayMe gradually resumed normal. An HSBC spokesperson said PayMe encountered technical issues in the underlying functions. The bank apologised for any inconvenience caused.

This was not the first time that users cannot use PayMe's service. In October and December 2020, there were two similar incidents as users could not use the services, while some of them even could not log in to the system. 

Currently, PayMe has more than two million users in Hong Kong. In 2020, over 2.3 million user of PayMe users made over 47% of P2P transactions in the city, meaning that the pandemic has not precluded daily social interactions despite various physical distancing requirements. 

It has been adding more features since its launch in 2017. For example, earlier this year, it introduced a new split bill function to enable users to share group expenses. 

Designed to eliminate the hassle of splitting payments manually, the new feature is easy to use as users only need to complete a few steps. There are two ways to use this new feature. First, users need to choose a bill and swipe left after going to the Me tab. After that, users can select up to 29 friends to split the bill with. After adding a message, PayMe will split the bill evenly and will send the requests afterwards.

Another way is to tap the P button and choose Request Money. Then, they need to tap "Split bill with friends" and select up to 29 friends to split the bill with. After entering the amount and adding a message, the entire process is done.

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