From our other sites
The story
On the morning of September 25, an outage hit Docomo SMTB Net Bank (formerly Sumishin SBI Net Bank), making some of its services hard to access. The timing coincided with payday and month-end, when transfers tend to pile up, and on X users posted things like “I’m getting a system error when I try to make a transfer” and “Funds I withdrew from my brokerage account still haven’t arrived.” The bank came under Docomo’s umbrella in October 2025 and only took on its current name on August 3, 2026. On 5channel, the thread drew a mix of reactions — speculation about the cause, and users weighing a switch to other banks.
IT Media NEWS, September 25, 2026, 12:32 PM
On the morning of September 25, Docomo SMTB Net Bank (formerly Sumishin SBI Net Bank) revealed that “an outage is occurring that is making some services difficult to access.” It has not disclosed which services are affected or when service will be restored.
On X, users have posted comments such as “I’m getting a system error when I try to make a transfer” and “Funds I withdrew from my brokerage account haven’t arrived.” The outage hit on the 25th — a day when payday and month-end transfers tend to bunch up — drawing an outcry from users.
Source: itmedia.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
They've got a ton of ex-Ministry of Internal Affairs bureaucrats parachuted in ("amakudari" hires)
Docomo just keeps getting worse and worse somehow
What happened to them
Must be sweet for Kitao — pocketing a huge goodwill premium on the sale.
Figured it was just a "goto-bi" (a day ending in 5 or 0, common for bill payments) thing, but turns out this was going on.
The staffed branch on Ome Kaido only has 5 ATMs, and people were spilling out the door, queued up outside.
If a withdrawal fails because of a bank error, there's sometimes a remedy available for that.
Must be NTT East/West's classic move — cutting maintenance to cut costs, lol
Income probably dropped, so maybe the capable people are the ones quitting first.
I switched to Sony Bank — or "Kusony" as folks here jokingly call it. Bye-bye, Kitao.
Shinsei's transfer system, including Kotora instant transfers, clearly got better sometime last year or this year.
It's a lot smoother now, no more stress.
Surprised there are still people who haven't switched.
If it's a new account, fine, but if you've been using it all along, you'd normally move by now.
There must be a ton of payments going through — total disaster, lol
It became a Docomo subsidiary in October 2025 and was renamed Docomo Bank on August 3, 2026,
so calling this "the first payday" since then is flat-out, unambiguously wrong.
There's already au Jibun Bank though.
Why'd the system go and crash today, I wonder?
Turns out the parent company, NTT East/West, is the real "crapfest" here (playing on the earlier "Kusony" jab).
MUFG acquires all shares of au Kabucom; sells its Jibun Bank stake to KDDI
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUB191RX0Z11C24A0000000/
MUFG originally had Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, right?
Though it later became Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.
Can't they just buy it back from Morgan Stanley?
Maybe it happened after that?
SBI Shinsei, Aozora, or SBJ Bank seem like safer bets.
Re: #91
Same as with Rakuten Bank's glitches — this kind of outage only ever hits a tiny fraction of users.
This one's app icon went lame the moment it switched to Docomo too — white background, red text, hard to read.
The colors overall do seem kind of pale and hard to make out?
Though I wouldn't call it total garbage.
It's bad enough to be off-putting.
For some reason it won't connect over WiFi.
Mine takes longer to find things now that it's Docomo too, but if you're on Android you can customize the icon however you want. Just tweak it yourself.
and the online form only showed "Sumishin SBI Bank" as the name, so I worried it might not go through — but it was fine.
Even if the bank's display name is different, as long as the bank's unique code number matches, there's no problem.
It was originally Sumishin SBI Net Bank, remember.
It got sold off to Docomo without anyone asking.
but Shinsei doesn't let you schedule transfers for a specific date.
I think there's a setting for the transfer date, but I've only ever used the soonest option every time.
They added that as of last month.
Background and key points of this thread
The bank, formerly Sumishin SBI Net Bank, became a Docomo subsidiary in October 2025 and formally changed its name to Docomo SMTB Net Bank on August 3, 2026. Some posts in the thread claimed this outage happened on “the first payday since the buyout,” but in fact roughly a year had passed since the acquisition and about a month and a half since the name change — other posters pointed out this timeline was wrong (see post 89). The cause and scope of the outage have not been officially disclosed, so claims in the thread like “it’s because NTT East/West cut maintenance costs” remain unsubstantiated speculation and should be treated with caution. That said, several posts noted the practical reality that transfers and ATM use tend to spike on “goto-bi” (days ending in 5 or 0) and on payday, which may have made this particular outage feel more disruptive than it otherwise would have. The thread also featured plenty of grumbling about the app’s usability since the rebrand, along with users weighing a move to rivals like Shinsei Bank or au Jibun Bank — a sign of just how sensitive users are when it comes to choosing an online bank.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (News Speed+) thread “Outage at Docomo SMTB Net Bank — cries of “my money isn’t arriving” and “not on payday, please”.”
Leave a Reply