Customers at major U.S. banks including Bank of America and Wells Fargo complained about delays with their direct deposits on Monday, following a glitch with processing payments that began Friday.
The Federal Reserve on Friday said the problem wasn’t related to a cybersecurity issue and that it had been resolved. But customers on Monday continued to report delays with direct deposits, reaching out to their banks on social media to report that their paychecks hadn’t landed in their accounts as expected.
Wells Fargo and Bank of America referred questions to The Clearing House, a payments company that operates the only private-sector automated clearing house (ACH) system in the U.S.
In an email to CBS MoneyWatch, The Clearing House said that some ACH payment instructions were sent to banks on November 2 with masked customer names and account numbers due to “a processing error.” Because the banks need that data to process incoming payments and post the money to customer accounts, those payments were delayed, it added.
The Clearing House “is working with the financial institutions with impacted customers, and with the Federal Reserve, to resolve this issue as quickly as possible,” the company said. “Many of the delayed payments have already been posted, and we will continue working with financial institutions to ensure the remaining transactions are processed.”
A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase said it will post scheduled direct deposits to customer accounts “as soon as we can,” noting that the banking giant will refund any overdraft fees that clients might incur stemming from the ACH problem.
DownDetector showed an increase in problems for Bank of America customers, including issues with funds transfers and online banking. Customers at other large banks, including Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, also reported ongoing problems on Monday, including issues retrieving account balances or other transactions, DownDetector said.
LOL! Your online bill pay system has been down for DAYS and you’re telling me to go there? Man Bank of America really has no collective clue. Maybe it’s time to find a new bank.
— Jay (@JayB4) November 6, 2023
“@BankofAmerica Day 4 & still no direct deposit, no update on potential resolution or at they very least what’s being done to resolve the issue, no transparency, no assistance, no communication from you all at all. Nothing. Wow. This is so bizarre,” one user said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, wrote on Monday morning.
