Commonwealth Bank is compensating customers for last week’s technical outage that meant many failed to receive wages or could not pay for food and other bills.

The bank has been quietly depositing $50 into the accounts of affected customers as it works to resolve what caused the 24-hour outage.

“Commonwealth Bank has made a payment into the accounts of customers who were unable to access their funds over the weekend, due to the delay in payments,” the CBA said on Wednesday morning.

“We are now refunding fees and charges associated to the network issue on Thursday for our customers who were impacted by this issue.”

Last week’s issue, which affected bank transfers and other online services, began shortly before midday on Thursday and was not resolved until late Friday morning.

BPAY payments, CBA’s Netbank internet platform and its app, call centre and in-branch services were also affected, with some branches forced to shut temporarily.

Thousands of angry customers reported being cut off from their accounts and unable to pay for groceries or lunch. Others had automatic payments fail, or did not receive wages.

Business owner Danielle Aquilina was among 10,000 people to leave comment’s on the bank’s Facebook page.

“Can’t pay wages to our employees,” she wrote.

“We have a business to run. I need an ETA, I can’t expect our employees to wait over the weekend for their pay if your system isn’t running tomorrow still. Really unhappy.”

On Wednesday, CBA said it had made “significant progress” in processing outstanding payments.

“We now believe funds should be in customer accounts. If customers have any issues or questions regarding their payments, they should contact our call centre or visit us in branch so we can assist,” it said.

However, some customers complained that payments had not been made or they had not received money they were due – and had been charged late fees as a result.

“What a joke! Charged an overdraw fee for your stuff up,” Amie Jeffery wrote.

“No hint of reimbursement here. Surely the penalties from other companies for nonpayment is bad enough.”

Chris Baker said he was still waiting for a $5000 payment from another bank to land in his account.

“[It] should have arrived in our CBA on Friday … It’s Wednesday now, I’ll wait a few more days, sure,” he said.

“Perhaps it should be a rule that consumers can charge you a late fee?”

Comm Bank also reminded customers it would not contact them to process the $50 reimbursement.

“If a customer is approached for their account details, they should not provide this – and the customer should let us know by phoning our call centre or visiting us in branch,” it said.

The bank has already said the outage was sparked by an internal upgrade.