"Trading is busy, please try again later"! Gold prices surge dramatically, testing bank precious metals storage systems

“Trying to buy the dip in gold prices to lower the average cost, but the bank system keeps showing errors. By the time I can buy, I’ve already missed the ideal price,” said Xiao Gao, a gold savings investor, on March 23.

Recently, gold prices have been steadily declining, and some investors see this as a “buying opportunity” or a good time to add to their positions. However, amid surging trading volume, many banks’ gold savings systems have experienced issues such as “High trading volume, please try again later” or “System is temporarily unavailable.”

Multiple banks’ gold savings systems experience outages

Since 2026, bank gold savings services have continued to grow in popularity. However, many investors have reported that the systems are unstable. In just a few months, from state-owned banks to joint-stock banks and city commercial banks, several institutions have experienced system crashes.

In early March, an investor reported that Jiangsu Bank’s gold savings system crashed. “I wanted to buy gold at a low point, but I couldn’t get in. The system showed ‘Peak trading hours, please try again later’.” Not only Jiangsu Bank, but also China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Zheshang Bank, and Minsheng Bank have all experienced issues with their gold savings systems “dropping the ball.”

“Due to the significant deviation of purchase quotes from normal prices, our bank has canceled transactions made at the deviated prices, including subscriptions, fixed investments, and redemptions.” Notably, Beijing Bank’s gold savings business experienced severe quote anomalies this month, with buy prices dropping as low as 1.6 yuan per gram, far below normal levels. Although some investors tried to exploit this loophole for quick gains, the bank’s subsequent “strict correction” once again put the system issues under the spotlight.

Zeng Gang, director of the Shanghai Financial and Development Laboratory, told reporters that recent anomalies in multiple banks’ gold savings systems reveal a lack of systemic preparedness when handling “hot” products: first, system capacity assessments are lagging; many banks did not conduct stress tests before promoting these services; second, outdated architecture makes it difficult to handle sudden high concurrency; third, risk prediction is lacking, with no buffers in place for external market volatility causing transaction surges.

Banks need ongoing investment

To ensure underlying technology stability

Regarding why gold-related services are more prone to causing system crashes, an internal banking source explained that compared to other wealth management products, gold services are more real-time and globally interconnected. Any fluctuations in external data sources can quickly propagate to the end-user, leading to abnormal quotes or system-wide outages.

Xue Hongyan, a special researcher at Zheshang Bank, told reporters that gold-related services are especially vulnerable to “overloading” bank systems due to three overlapping pressures: price volatility driving trading surges; complex business processes involving multiple interactions; and rigid traditional architecture with limited scalability. Marketing campaigns often underestimate capacity, resulting in “theater effects” that strain the system.

Bank insiders believe that under the trend of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, banks must continue investing to ensure system stability. The key is to build a quantitative evaluation system. This can be achieved by clearly demonstrating the long-term benefits of technological upgrades in supporting business growth and reducing unit costs, innovating with “basic investment + flexible budget” models shared across the industry, and incorporating system stability metrics into management assessments to reverse the tendency of prioritizing marketing over technology.

“Banks need to deeply integrate business planning with technical evaluation to avoid aggressive front-end development and passive back-end responses,” Zeng Gang said. He recommends introducing a “capacity red line” system: during product development, conduct stress tests simulating high concurrency scenarios and set clear upper limits. When actual traffic approaches these thresholds, systems should automatically activate rate limiting or circuit breakers to prevent crashes.