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4 steps to take following a bank outage
Accessing your bank account from your computer or mobile device can be incredibly convenient. But when a technological snag occurs, you could find yourself in a bind without easy access to your funds.
Though uncommon, bank outages do happen. In July, for instance, cybersecurity company Crowdstrike released a faulty update that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices, hitting sectors such as aviation, healthcare?, and financial services with major disruptions. Several banks — including BOK Financial, First Citizens Bank, and TD Bank — notified users of technical issues following the outage, according to Newsweek.
In July 2023, JPMorgan Chase experienced an outage that led to a widespread disruption of Zelle transactions.
A bank outage can happen for a number of reasons — a software update gone wrong, loss of power, a cybersecurity breach — all of which can impact access to your banking platforms and money.
As a result, it can halt all new and recurring transactions and lead to missed payments and late fees.
“Automatic withdrawals can fail, missed payments can occur because you can't move money around, and you may not be able to use your debit cards or write checks to pay for groceries or gas,” said Jared Smith, a distinguished engineer with SecurityScorecard, a cybersecurity platform used for predicting and remediating potential security risks.
How to handle a bank outage
Even if you weren’t impacted by recent outages, you could be in the future.
If you find yourself unable to access your bank account due to an online banking outage, here are a few steps you can take to protect your money and personal information, both before and after an outage occurs:
1. Open an account with a secondary bank
Some people enjoy the convenience of keeping all their financial accounts under one roof. However, if an outage occurs with your primary bank, having a checking account or credit card at a different financial institution could give you access to emergency funds while the issue is sorted out.
If you don’t already, consider opening a secondary bank account or credit card so you have access to money if your main bank is experiencing an outage.
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2. Contact your service providers
If you have autopay set up for recurring bills or loan payments, be sure to contact your service provider as soon as you’re made aware of a bank outage.
Smith said that if you have autopay set up for recurring bills and you’re concerned the bank won't be able to process them, it’s important to reach out to each service provider right away and let them know to expect a potential delay in payment. “Include publicly accessible online references to the outage or attach documentation from the bank sent to you personally or gathered at a local branch,” he said.
If autopayments were disrupted, you may want to pay your service providers directly instead, either by transferring money from a different bank or writing a check.
3. Verify that your payments went through
Once an outage has been resolved, double-check with your service providers that they’ve received any scheduled payments, or have reprocessed those payments if they didn’t go through.
If you incurred any bank fees due to delays in payments, such as overdraft fees, contact the bank to have them refunded.
4. Beef up your online safety
Smith said that if the outage was caused by a cyberattack or other security breach, you should immediately change your online banking password, and review all login activity to verify that you were the only one to access the account. If your personal information or passwords were compromised, hackers can use this information to gain access to other financial accounts or open new ones in your name.
Regardless of whether or not you’re affected by a recent banking outage, make it a habit to create strong passwords, use unique passwords for each account, and set up two-factor authentication for an added layer of security. You never know if your bank could be impacted next.
Read more: 6 important security features to look for in a bank
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