Scotiabank says it has fixed technical issue that stalled payday deposits to customers

After Scotiabank customers expecting to be paid on Friday reported that their paycheques hadn't been deposited, the bank says it has resolved the issue and that clients will start seeing payments land in their accounts.

"We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience the earlier technical issue has had on our clients, and sincerely appreciate their patience as we worked through this," a spokesperson for Scotiabank told CBC News in an email on Friday.

"We have resolved the technical issue impacting our clients' inbound payments. Clients will start to see their payments posted to their accounts. Any fees incurred as a result of this issue will be reimbursed."

The spokesperson did not provide additional information about the nature of the technical issue. They also did not give an approximate time as to when customers can expect money to show in their accounts, or give an update on the Scotiabank mobile banking app, which some users said they were have trouble accessing.

Some users on the social media platform X noticed the issue early on Friday, noting that the outage occurred on a payday just before the end of the month when many people have rent, mortgage and other bills to pay.

Downdetector, an online outage tracker, showed users began reporting problems with Scotiabank mobile banking, online banking and depositing on Friday morning. The number of reports peaked at 5,000 just before 9:15 a.m. ET.

By Friday at 1 p.m. ET, several customers who hadn't initially received their paycheques told CBC News that the money had landed in their accounts. A half-hour later, more than 3,300 people were still reporting the outage through Downdetector.

A technical issue

Earlier in the day, the Scotiabank spokesperson told CBC News the bank was experiencing a technical issue in which some clients' inbound payments, including direct deposits and cheque deposits, were not applied to their accounts. The same statement was posted to the bank's account on X.

It's not the first time a Canadian bank's online or direct deposit systems have malfunctioned. Earlier this year, Bank of Montreal's online banking services were disrupted after a fire alarm went off at one of the bank's data centres.

Similarly, TD Bank said that data-processing issues were responsible for a day-long direct deposit outage last year.

"We've had outages and technical issues with almost all the banks. These systems aren't foolproof," said Daniel Tsai, an adjunct professor of business and law at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"Some of these IT systems are legacy programs that have been in place since the 1980s, and we don't know necessarily what the issue is at [Scotiabank], but this is not something that is unexpected and uncommon," he said.

However, Tsai said that these incidents lead to a loss of confidence among consumers. "It's that much more incumbent on banks like Bank of Nova Scotia to make sure that they service their customers and have properly functioning IT systems."

'It's quite a frustration,' customer says

Greg Adams, a Scotiabank client in Newfoundland, told CBC News that he usually expects his paycheque every Friday morning. But when he woke up this Friday, "there was no direct payment into the bank account."

He first checked with his company's payroll team, which said that the money had cleared the corporate account. His colleagues who bank elsewhere had received their pay, too.

"As bad as things are right now with the economy, every cent counts," said Adams. "So when you look into your bank account, [and] you have no money or no extra money to do the things that you need to do for the week and the weekend with bills coming out ... it's quite a frustration."

Ottawa resident Meg Watson, also a Scotiabank client, didn't get her paycheque in the morning but had received it by Friday afternoon. Before then, she had tried everything: restarting her phone, deleting and re-downloading the app and contacting her HR department at work.

Watson said she contacted Scotiabank around 6 a.m. ET, and a customer service representative told her the problem would be resolved by 8 a.m. ET.

"So I contacted my branch again and there was an automated voice memo [just] saying what the news is — saying they're having issues and that it should be resolved shortly," Watson said.

"And that's where we are. I keep checking my apps. The app seems to be crashing."