Some bank customers still can't get their paychecks as direct-deposit woes persist
Customers at major U.S. banks including Bank of America and Wells Fargo continued to experience delays with their direct deposits on Tuesday, following a glitch with processing payments that began Friday.
Customers on Monday reported 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. Some continued to report that they were still awaiting their direct deposits on Tuesday.
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 on Monday, 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."
On Tuesday, TCH said that it is continuing to work with banks as well as the Federal Reserve "to resolve this issue as quickly as possible." Banks are determining which payments need to be resent due to the error on Friday and are sending the payments to TCH for processing, the company said.
It added, "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 automatically refund any overdraft fees that clients might incur stemming from the ACH problem.
Problems with deposits
The ACH network allows funds to be transferred electronically between U.S. bank accounts, with both TCH and the Federal Reserve Banks collectively processing millions of daily transactions, according to TCH. ACH payments work by an operator, such as TCH, sending a file to a bank or credit union that then instructs the institution to credit the funds to a customer's account.
TCH said in a statement posted to its website that the error of sending payments with some masked information was "due to a TCH error and was not caused by the financial institutions that originated or received the payments, or the businesses or other account holders that initiated them."
In an email, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it is aware of the problem and is "monitoring how institutions are responding."
"This disruption underscores the importance of the nation's payments infrastructure. Consumers affected by this processing error should not be penalized, whether by overdraft fees, late fees or other penalties. Affected consumers can submit a complaint by visiting consumerfinance.gov/complaint," the agency added.
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 Tuesday, including issues retrieving account balances or other transactions, DownDetector said.
"@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.
