With electronic transactions still severely curtailed by communications failures that have persisted since last week’s cyberattack on Unitel, hundreds of Luanda residents are descending on bank branches to carry out payments, deposits and transfers that they would normally handle online.
Long queues — stretching outside entrances across multiple districts of the Angolan capital — were observed by the Lusa news agency, with increasingly impatient customers waiting to reach tellers to conduct basic financial operations.
Among those waiting outside a bank branch in the Viana municipality of Luanda was Madalena Francisco, a 21-year-old student and small trader, who had already spent more than an hour in line before reaching the counter.
Frustrated by the failures in communications and in transactions via the Multicaixa Express app — the widely used mobile platform that allows payments and cash withdrawals without a physical card — Francisco said her business activities had ground to a halt because she could neither send nor receive electronic payments.
“The business I do is completely tied up. I cannot receive payments and I cannot make payments. I now have outstanding debts that simply would not exist if the network were working properly,” she said.
Francisco added that even her personal shopping had been affected. “My Multicaixa Express is not working properly because of the Unitel outages, and so here I am in a bank queue — something I absolutely hate,” she said.
The shift back to physical cash over electronic means has driven hundreds of citizens to bank branches over recent days, reflecting the fact that electronic communications remain “unstable,” Mauro Machado told Lusa outside another Luanda branch.
Machado, a 27-year-old pastry chef and photographer whose work depends heavily on digital tools, said he had been struggling to access the internet and use payment applications since the attack.
“Right now, physical cash is actually more practical, because you can pay for whatever you want. That is why I came to the bank,” he said.
A full week after the cyberattack that struck Unitel, many residents say they continue to face significant difficulties accessing electronic services, with disruptions rippling through everyday commercial and financial life across the capital.
Unitel described the incident as a “deliberate and malicious” attack and pledged to work towards the complete restoration of services following the breach, which occurred the previous Tuesday.
Student Telma Fernandes said the current circumstances had even limited her ability to use her standard Multicaixa debit card for routine transactions, making a trip to a physical bank branch to withdraw cash unavoidable at this stage.
“I normally rely on electronic money, but given the situation we are in because of the network breakdown, I have been using more physical cash,” she said, also describing difficulties with the Multicaixa Express application.
“I had to make some payments and some enrolment fees that I have still not been able to process because of the network situation,” Fernandes said. “So here we are in the bank queue trying to see if we can get cash at the counter.” She had already been waiting for two hours.
Roberto Segunda, a 22-year-old unemployed man, described the “disadvantages” of the disruption to electronic money given Unitel’s ongoing outages, saying he had been “forced” to wake up early and go to the bank to beat what had become the customary large crowds of recent days.
“When electronic money works, there is no need to leave home — you can make transfers, make payments, and your purchase arrives at your door. But now the situation has become complicated,” he said.
Multicaixa Express was the most widely used channel by Angolans for financial transactions in 2025, accounting for 62% of all operations on the interbank network, according to data from the Empresa Interbancária de Serviços (EMIS), Angola’s interbank services company.
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Source: Notícias ao Minuto / Original article: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/3032177/ataque-a-unitel-ainda-afeta-negocios-e-liquidacao-de-dividas-em-luanda#utm_source=rss-mundo&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rssfeed
