A Scotiabank sign is shown on a shopping mall in Ottawa on June 27. According to the Downdetector website, reports of problems accessing Scotiabank services started spiking shortly after 5 a.m. ET and peaked around 9:30 a.m. ET before tapering off.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T customers expecting to receive paycheques or other deposits into their accounts on Friday had to wait several hours for an unexplained technical glitch to be resolved before finally getting their money.
In a statement, spokesperson Katie Raskina said Scotiabank experienced a technical issue where some clients’ inbound payments, including direct deposits and cheque deposits, were not being applied to their accounts. She added via e-mail that any fees clients incurred as a result of the issue will be refunded.
The timing of the outage was particularly inconvenient for affected Scotiabank customers, as Friday is commonly when people receive their paycheques via direct deposit.
According to the Downdetector website, reports of problems accessing Scotiabank services started spiking shortly after 5 a.m. ET and peaked around 9:30 a.m. ET before tapering off slightly. The vast majority of reports appear related to issues receiving deposits, though numerous posts on social media also cited issues accessing Scotiabank’s mobile banking app as well as its iTrade direct investing platform.
At 1:30 p.m. ET, the bank released an updated statement saying the issue had been resolved.
“We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience the earlier technical issue has had on our clients, and sincerely appreciate their patience as we worked through this,” Ms. Raskina’s statement said. “Clients will start to see their payments posted to their accounts.”
Some Scotiabank customers continued to post online about encountering problems even after the lender announced the problem was fixed. Many comments said expected deposits had been received but that they were still unable to transfer those funds or use them for bill payments.
Ms. Raskina declined to comment on the number of customers affected by the glitch or whether the problems were network-wide. She also declined to comment on what ultimately caused the disruption.
While the majority of complaints submitted to Downdetector continue to be related to deposits, a larger proportion of the more recent complaints appear to be related to online banking and mobile banking services.
The outage occurred one week after companies around the world, including several Canadian banks, suffered widespread information technology outages as a result of a faulty update from Texas-based cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.
None of Canada’s other major banks reported any technical issues Friday.