Electronic payment outfit nochex.com is still fighting to get its service up and running again after carrying out essential work on its site.

Some services on Nochex.com have been unavailable for the last three days after the company carried out work to add more capacity.

A notice on its Web site reads: "Accounts unavailable 14-Mar-2002. We apologise for remaining unavailable. We are upgrading our computing capacity to keep up with unprecedented demand, and this is taking longer than we anticipated. We are working as fast as we can as you will imagine. Many apologies for the delay."

Despite this message, the downtime has caused unease among some of Nochex.com's users, who are claiming that they've been kept in the dark.

Speaking to The Register yesterday, Philip Sheldrake, the CEO of Nochex, tried to calm people's fears.

"Your money's safe," he reassured them, explaining that the work was taking longer than expected.

Nochex.com - which has more than 100,000 users - says this is the first time in 12 months of operation that it has suffered such downtime. ®