Is Zelle working? Bank customers report it's back online after banking outages
Zelle has resumed service after a temporary outage that affected customers at various banks, with the disruption attributed to a third-party issue.
Zelle is back in business following a temporary outage affecting customers of several banks, which the company said was caused by an issue at a third-party provider. Many customers experienced delays in payments during the issue, which was tracked by DownDetector that spotted a spike in complaints starting Friday morning.
A Zelle spokesperson confirmed that the cause of the disruption was related to payments giant Fiserv, which provides services to some financial institutions. According to Fiserv, the issue is now resolved, and it had been determined that it was not caused by malicious action.
Zelle is back after reporting outages in the United States
According to DownDetector, a service that monitors outages, there was a spike in user reports of issues with payments starting first thing Friday morning, and the complaints started to decline by later Friday afternoon.
Zelle offered confirmation of the problem, stating that it was not a Zelle issue, but one related to the payments giant Fiserv, which provides services for certain banks. A Fiserv representative told CNN that the issue was the result of an internal issue, and was now resolved, and they are working through the backlog of pending transactions.
'We want to assure Zelle users that the outage was not produced from foul play. That all necessary precautions were in place to keep our users safe, and we will continue to take measures to make sure that kind of disruption does not occur in the future. Zelle confirmed that our partners were working to resolve the issue, and advised users to remain patient as some of their transactions may be in "payment pending" status.'
Users reported outage on Zelle on Friday morning. Photo: Freepik
Zelle did not disclose which banks had the problem, but most of the users that reported issues were users of Truist and Navy Federal Credit Union. One user of Truist, who had an issue since Thursday evening with a pending rent payment, posted about this on DownDetector and complained about a "complete lack of support, accountability, and response."
When asked about the issue, officials at Bank of America said we should talk to Zelle. Matthew Card, a spokesperson for Bank of America, told us that there were delays for some customers on Zelle. "This was an issue related to a vendor that affected multiple banks that has since been fixed," Card said.
Zelle is a subsidiary of Early Warning Services, which is a joint venture of the major banks in the United States, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, which are able to transfer billions of dollars a day, at lightning speed.
