By Financial Observer

One week, two failures

In a single October week, the Bank of Mauritius’ payment rails failed the public. The national switch froze every mobile payment in the country; days later, month-end interbank transfers that should take seconds took hours. The Bank has said nothing.

MauCAS was Mauritian finance’s quiet success story. One QR code, any app, any bank: Mauritians pay for everything with a scan, from the weekly shop to an ice cream at Flic-en-Flac.

On 23 October, it stopped. Juice, my.t money, blink and every other platform froze, leaving thousands at the checkout with a full trolley and a phone that would not pay. Emtel put it plainly: a Bank of Mauritius system issue had disrupted MauCAS.

A week later, on Friday 30 October, the last working day of the month, interbank payments crawled: transfers that should take seconds took five hours, as many users reported. This is not new: every month-end, volumes peak, predictably, and the rails stall. A delay that recurs monthly is not bad luck; it is a limit nobody has fixed.

Most Mauritians still do not know whose systems were at fault; many blamed their app or bank. Both lead to the same door: the switch and the clearing rails belong to the Bank of Mauritius. Their bank did not fail them. The central bank’s plumbing did.

Payment rails are not back-office IT; they are critical infrastructure of systemic importance. This was the easy part. If they buckle under groceries and salaries, who will trust them with bond and securities settlement?

Unofficial accounts point to upgrades never carried out: a known risk left unmanaged.

And from the Bank of Mauritius: silence. Emtel apologised; the central bank has issued no statement, no incident report, no apology, and its silence lets commercial banks take the blame. A regulator that polices banks’ resilience must show its own.

A question of competence

Section 14(2) of the Bank of Mauritius Act is clear: no one may be appointed Deputy Governor without “recognised experience in banking or financial matters”. Section 14(3) makes them responsible for running it.

The organisation chart puts technology and payments under the First Deputy Governor; published analysis adds financial markets and monetary policy. The holder also chairs the MIC, the Rs 80 billion fund on the Bank’s balance sheet. Since December 2024: Rajeev Hasnah.

Would the Bank of Mauritius ever pass as fit and proper a commercial bank’s head of payments and IT with no experience in payments, technology or banking? It would not. Nor should it hold itself to a lower standard.

The Act asks for recognised banking experience, not a generous CV. Mauritians have never been told how the selection was run: who was considered, against what criteria, and how a candidate lacking the required experience won.

Nearly two years in, the record speaks for itself. An FX liquidity crisis: a dislocated market and a persistent dollar shortage that punishes importers, consumers and investors. Some Rs 50 billion of excess MUR liquidity sitting unabsorbed, blunting the key rate and impairing monetary policy transmission. Inflation heading for 6.4% by end-2026 on IMF projections, above the 2-5% target. And now a national switch that went down, and month-end payments that still take hours. None is his failure alone, but each sits in his remit, none has improved on his watch and no fix has been offered.

The Governor shares the responsibility. Dr Priscilla Muthoora Thakoor, a long-serving IMF economist, was given the red carpet by the mainstream media. A year on, the results are below par: no credible signal to the market, no update on the Bank’s existential problems: the FX crunch, excess liquidity, Silver Bank, where Rs 906 m of public money sits in an unexplained receivership, and the MIC, which the IMF wants unwound and for which no plan exists. Markets read people before policies, and they are reading silence. Her travel and per diems have drawn scrutiny too.

Instant everywhere, except here

Abroad, central banks, banks and fintechs are pouring resources into digital money: settlement in seconds as standard, atomic settlement in testing, heavy investment in cyber-security.

What have the Governor and her deputies brought back from those missions? If these rails cannot handle a busy Friday, how would they withstand a cyber-attack? And how would the Bank of Mauritius respond: with another week of silence? Mauritius calls itself an international financial centre. Investors notice.

A broken social contract

The Bank of Mauritius has a social contract: a stable currency, foreign exchange when needed, money that moves when sent. It is failing on every count.

Mauritians already endure a water crisis. The government that hailed its “dream team” has fixed neither. Dry taps at home, frozen payments at the till: Mauritians pay for both.

Two things must happen now:

  1. An independent inquiry into the October outage and the month-end delays, with findings published.
  2. The Governor and the First Deputy Governor must answer to Parliament for these failures and the silence that followed.

A central bank runs on trust, and trust, like a payment, either arrives or does not. If those at the top of the Bank of Mauritius cannot keep the rupee moving, they owe the country an explanation of why they should remain.