BB&T fixes ATMs hit by tech glitch, but online banking still down

BB&T is the latest bank to be hit by widespread outages to ATMs and digital platforms due to technical problems.

As of Friday afternoon, BB&T’s online and mobile banking were unavailable to consumers, according to a spokesman for the Winston-Salem, N.C., company. BB&T’s ATMs and automated telephone services had also experienced outages, but both were restored on Friday, the $216 billion-asset company said in a message posted on its website.

BB&T cited “an equipment malfunction in one our data centers” as the cause of the outage. “At this time, we have no reason to believe this issue is related to cybersecurity,” said Brian Davis, a bank spokesman.

A BB&T branch.
Signage is displayed outside a BB&T Corp. bank branch in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017. BB&T Corp. is scheduled to release earning figures on January 19. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

BB&T will keep most of its branches open two hours longer on Friday and Saturday to help consumers affected by the outage, Davis said.

BB&T first acknowledged the problem on Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Other large banks have dealt with technical outages recently. A glitch caused JPMorgan Chase’s website to display incorrect account information for about three hours on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The bank’s customer-support Twitter page said on Thursday that the problem had been corrected.

Wells Fargo acknowledged on Thursday that some customers were having difficulty accessing online and mobile banking. It was the second time in two weeks that the San Francisco bank experienced an outage. Wells Fargo’s customer-service Twitter page on Thursday night said that the issue was fixed.

Last week, some TD Bank customers were unable to use online and mobile banking after the Canadian-owned bank ran into technical trouble while upgradings its software.

In January, Capital One Financial charged customers multiple times for the same debit card transaction due to technical glitches.

BB&T told customers on Friday that they can still use their bank-issued debit, credit and prepaid cards. If customers incur fees due to the outage “we will waive or reimburse those fees,” Davis said.

Still, consumers have fired off angry tweets because of problems caused by the outage. “You claim to ‘hear’ our frustrations yet you don’t address that which we are frustrated about. Shame on you,” one customer wrote on BB&T’s Twitter page.

BB&T said some customers’ online information will not be immediately updated on Friday afternoon. “We expect those balances and transactions to become current later today,” Davis said.

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Mobile banking Online banking Cyber security Consumer banking ATMs Technology BB&T North Carolina
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