Amid a deluge of complaints that paychecks and other direct deposits weren’t going through to customer accounts, Wells Fargo on Friday said it has corrected the issue and transactions should now be reflected in customer balances.
The bank is still scrambling to restore normal service after customers were shut out of mobile and online banking services on Thursday. ATM services have since been restored and branches are operational, but the effects of the system outage have spilled into a second day.
“As a result of the process to restore systems yesterday, some transactions and balances were not visible in online banking or ATMs” as of Friday morning, Wells Fargo said in a statement. “The transactions were processed normally, and customers can use their accounts with confidence. This issue has now been corrected, and all transactions are now visible. We are experiencing higher than normal volumes so there still may be delays in online banking and contact center response times.”
Some Wells Fargo employees were affected. “Some team members were not able to see the payroll deposits in their online banking accounts for a short period of time. Wells Fargo payroll was processed normally. This issue has now been corrected,” the bank said in a separate statement.
The outage is putting stress on employees of companies that use Wells Fargo for payroll processing. Vanessa Alonso, who works in the accounting department of a small printing company called Nuvo Group in New York City, said she had tried to put payroll through for the company’s two dozen or so employees but was unable. She said she’s been trying to reach Wells Fargo about the problem with no success.
“I just get a message that says ‘We’re experiencing high call volume,’” she said.
In a statement late Thursday night, the San Francisco bank said mobile and online banking systems were operational except for some features such as consumer credit card and mortgage balances, and added that it was working to restore them. Contact centers are up and running, Wells Fargo said, but people might have to wait longer than normal if they are calling in.
“We continue to work on restoring all our services as soon as possible, and encourage customers to contact us if they have questions or concerns,” Wells Fargo said in the statement. “We apologize for the inconvenience caused by these system issues, and we want our customers to know that any Wells Fargo fees incurred as a result of these issues will be reversed.”
The bank said Wells Fargo credit and debit cards could be used for purchases.The complaints piled up on social media, however, with anecdotal reports that direct deposits weren’t reflected in balances on the mobile app. Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest U.S. bank with a sprawling coast-to-coast branch operation, made several posts on Twitter, most recently saying, “We want our customers to know that this is a contained issue affecting one of our facilities, and not due to any cybersecurity event.”
Earlier Thursday the bank said the system issues were due to a power shutdown at one of its facilities after smoke was detected after routine maintenance.
It’s not clear if that incident was connected to one at a data center Wells Fargo keeps in Minnesota, where a fire suppression system was accidentally tripped early Thursday morning, prompting a visit from the local fire department. That incident happened at 5 a.m., and the bank called the fire department at 9 a.m. The fire department told CNBC on Thursday there was no fire.
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