Consumers from major banks reported that they were unable to access the mobile apps and websites of several Australian banks including Westpac, St George, ANZ and the Commonwealth Bank.

Various users received error messages while attempting to log in to the services, while the Reserve Bank and Virgin Airlines were also affected. Beyond Australia, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s website briefly went down along with reports of dozens of other website outages, including for some US airlines.

A fault at web services company Akamai was understood to have caused the fault which occurred for an hour at about 3pm AEST on Thursday. Akamai runs one of the world’s biggest content delivery networks, or CDNs, platforms that make the internet faster and more stable by making information available across many locations.

Commbank stated on Twitter it was aware of an issue that was preventing users from logging on.

“We’re aware some of you are experiencing difficulties accessing our services and we’re urgently investigating. We apologise and thanks for your patience, we’ll provide an update soon,” the bank tweeted.

Westpac followed with its own Tweet:

Neos Kosmos staff were unable to enter their banking apps for several major banks.

Down Detector, which offiers real-time status and outage information revealed other outlets had experienced outages. These included the RBA and Virgin Australia.