Bug in Fed’s payment system prevents Americans from getting paid

Some of the largest United States banks cannot facilitate customer’s deposits after one of the Federal Reserve’s payment systems suffered an outage on Nov. 3.

The Federal Reserve said the bug was caused by a “processing issue” in the Automated Clearing House — a payment processing network widely used by banks and employers to deposit wages into employee bank accounts.

The ACH is operated by the Federal Reserve Banks and the Electronic Payment Network.

Banks stressed customer accounts “remain secure,” and the Federal Reserve claims all of its services resumed at 4:44 pm UTC time.

However, customers are still complaining about the ordeal. One X (formerly Twitter) user, Georgiaree Godrey, says she still hasn’t been paid and as a result, cannot pay rent.

Hello. Some deposits from 11/3 may be temporarily delayed due to an issue impacting multiple financial institutions. Your accounts remain secure, and your balance will be updated as soon as the deposit is received. ^adrian

— Bank of America Help (@BofA_Help) November 3, 2023

Another X user, Des Imoto, iterated that funds can’t be secure if they’re missing and suggested that Bitcoin (BTC) serves as a fix to the problem at hand.

“It’s the opposite of secure since the funds are missing. #Bitcoin fixes this.”

X user LashishLizard also asked Wells Fargo whether they would pay for any late fees imposed against them.

“So are you going to pay everyone’s late fees, court fees and everything else associated with this BS? Because credit companies, bills, landlords don’t want to hear you don’t have it,” they said.

Hi, we appreciate you reaching out to us. We would like to see how we can help. Please send us your full name/ZIP/phone # and we would be happy to follow up with you. ^adrian

— Bank of America Help (@BofA_Help) November 3, 2023

A CNBC survey from September found that 61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 58% in March.

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Outage reports from the U.S. banks started to rise at about 11:00 am UTC time on Nov. 3.

Reports from Bank of America peaked at 313 across a 15-minute interval at 4:00 pm UTC time, according to Downdetector. Chase and Wells Fargo reached similar peaks of 279 and 137 around the same timeframe.

The Federal Reserve launched FedNow in July, which allows banks and money transmitter services to make payments instantly without needing to rely on the ACH.

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