Customers grapple with deposit delays at big banks. What it means for you

Customers at several big banks on Friday wrestled with direct deposit delays stemming from an industry-wide processing issue.

There was a surge of “outages” reported by banking customers Friday morning, including Bank of America, Chase, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, according to Downdetector. But the site does not specify the nature of the complaints.

All Federal Reserve Financial Services are now operating normally, according to a Federal Reserve statement released Friday.

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The Fed reported a processing issue with the Electronic Payments Network, a private sector operator for Automated Clearing House, or ACH, a network that processes transactions.

“There was a processing error with an ACH file last night; it was a manual error associated with the file,” said Gregory MacSweeney, vice president and head of communications at The Clearing House, the banking association and payments company that owns the EPN processing system.

Banks are now working to correct the errors in those payments, he said.

“We’re aware of an industry-wide technical issue impacting some deposits for Nov. 3,” Lee Henderson, vice president of public affairs and communications at U.S. Bank, told CNBC in a statement. “Customer accounts remain secure, and balances will be updated when deposits are received.”

“We do not have an estimate on timing at this point,” Henderson added. “Customers do not need to take any action.”

“The originators of these deposits are working to resend the payment files, and we will post them as soon as we can,” said a Chase spokesperson in a written statement. Bank of America, Truist and Wells Fargo did not provide commentary by publication time.

Customers affected by the deposit delays can call their lenders and explain their late payments were due to an industry-wide issue, said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree.

“When money that we expect to be there on a Friday morning isn’t there and your autopay is set up to pay a credit card or a buy now pay later loan, it can cause some real issues,” he said.

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