Major Canadian bank experiences direct deposit outage on payday

CTV National News: Scotiabank tech issue A tech issue at one of Canada’s largest banks left clients in the lurch as pay-day was delayed. Jeremie Charron reports.

Scotiabank says it has fixed a technical issue that impacted direct deposits on Friday morning.

"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," a bank spokesperson told CTVNews.ca by email. "We have resolved the technical issue impacting our clients' inbound payments."

On Friday morning, numerous Scotiabank clients reported problems with inbound payments like direct deposits and cheque deposits. The bank eventually acknowledged on social media that it was experiencing technical difficulties.

"Clients will start to see their payments posted to their accounts," the Scotiabank spokesperson said. "Any fees incurred as a result of this issue will be reimbursed."

Third-party website DownDetector showed a surge in outage reports beginning early Friday, rising to roughly 5,000 by 9 a.m. ET from near zero the day prior. As of 2:30 p.m. ET, 65 per cent of issue reports were labelled under "deposits."

Food, rent now out of reach for some

With thousands of Canadians cut off from a payday and the first of August looming, tight financial times grew ever more dire for some of those impacted.

Some described shock and concern Friday morning as they woke to find their deposits missing. Mortgage and car payments, bills and rent installments, even groceries suddenly appeared beyond their means.

Matthew Lonar, a customer service associate in Halifax, told CTVNews.ca that with the high cost of living, he's found himself living paycheque to paycheque, making Friday's disruption especially unwelcome.

"It's a struggle to make ends meet," he wrote in an email. "If the situation isn't resolved soon, I'm going to have to figure out how I am going to eat tonight and bills are going to go unpaid."

Compounding frustrations was the delayed communication from Scotiabank, which issued a brief statement to social media hours after error reports began to spike on sites like DownDetector.

"We had to go to [CTV News] to be told that there is a problem," wrote Verena and Richard Traill of Larder Lake, Ont., in an email. "We rely on our banks to be fail[-]proof, and forthcoming of any issues."

In advance of the technical fix, the bank's client services phone line was playing an automated message assuring customers that work was underway to rectify the outage.

"We are aware of the issue, and teams are actively working to resolve the concerns," it said.

"We anticipate the problem to be resolved shortly."

Have you been affected by the Scotiabank outage? Have you missed a deposit? How did it impact your Friday morning?

Share your story by emailing us at [e-mail] with your name, general location and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a CTVNews.ca story.

This is a developing story. More to come.