Citizens outage knocks out online, mobile banking for customers

Customers at Citizens Financial Group were prevented on Wednesday from accessing their online and mobile accounts, in what the company has described as an issue with its technology.

At about 8:30 a.m., the Providence, R.I., company announced on Twitter that its digital channels were unavailable to customers. A Citizens spokesman confirmed the outage, describing it as a “technical issue.” The underlying problem was resolved by the early afternoon, though "some customers" were still unable to access their accounts due to "residual access delays," according to the spokesman.

"I want to reiterate that we apologize to customers for any inconvenience," the spokesman said in an email. No additional details about the nature of the problem or the number of customers affected were provided.

Kelvin Ma/Bloomberg

Frustrated customers reacted to the news on Twitter, posting screenshots of Citizens’ message and complaining about the frequency of outages.

The $153.5 billion-asset Citizens has experienced a number of technical glitches in recent months, according to media reports.

The company suffered an outage in late April, leaving customers unable to access their accounts for several hours. Additionally, in March, Citizens customers in Cleveland discovered missing payments and unprocessed online bills, in what the company described as a “vendor processing issue.”

Citizens' outage on Wednesday is the latest a string of tech-related snafus across the banking industry.

JPMorgan Chase and PNC Financial Services have both reported problems with their online and mobile accounts over the past year, which left customers unable to view their financial information. In perhaps the biggest banking service interruption of the year, a massive data center outage at BB&T disrupted online and mobile service for customers over a period of several days.