Online services for Bank Sepah and Bank Melli's mobile application have gone offline across Iran, coinciding with a series of severe explosions at strategic sites in Tehran.
Online banking services and card transactions for major Iranian state banks have gone offline, according to reports from Persian-language media on March 16, 2026. These systemic financial disruptions coincide with a highly chaotic morning in the capital, where dozens of explosions struck strategic infrastructure in western Tehran.
The opposition-aligned exile network Iran International reported that "online services and the use of Bank Sepah cards are still inactive," citing domestic Iranian media reports. The broadcast network also noted that "Baam," the mobile banking application for Bank Melli, "is also not working." Iran International supplemented their coverage with an interview featuring economist Ali Dadpay to address the situation.
The domestic urgent news aggregator اخبارفوری خبرفوری جنگ امریکا حمله (Urgent News War America Attack) corroborated the service failures, posting the identical alert that Bank Sepah's cards and Bank Melli's online applications are currently non-functional.
These widespread financial disruptions occurred against the backdrop of an intense series of kinetic incidents earlier in the day. Throughout the early morning, approximately 30 blasts hit western Tehran, severely damaging strategic sites, including fuel facilities and aircraft at Mehrabad Airport. Local and opposition sources have pointed to potential Israeli and United States involvement in the strikes, adding significant tension to the nation's unfolding domestic infrastructure failures.
Both source channels provided nearly identical text regarding the banking outages, suggesting they are drawing from the same underlying domestic reports or press releases. The exact cause of the banking disruption is not explicitly stated in the source text, though it is reported chronologically alongside the kinetic strikes in Tehran described in the background context.