Scotiabank has acknowledged technical difficulties affecting direct deposits as clients report missed payments Friday morning.
“We are currently experiencing a technical issue where some of our clients’ inbound payments, including direct deposits and cheque deposits, are not being applied to their accounts,” a representative for the bank told CTVNews.ca, in an emailed statement and in a post to X.
“We are actively working to resolve this as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Third-party website DownDetector showed a surge in outage reports beginning overnight Friday, rising to roughly 5,000 by 9 a.m. from near zero the day prior. As of shortly after 10:30 a.m. ET, 89 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 statement to X, Friday morning, 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 [email protected] 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.