Some Bank of America customers are reportedly experiencing issues with missing funds in their accounts.
Many customers expressed their surprise and frustration on social media after checking their bank accounts on January 18th, as a reported outage affected the systems of Bank of America and Zelle.
Reports of Zelle’s outage surged starting at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, as per Downdetector. A Twitter user by the name of Gennette Cordova tweeted, “I woke up to find a lot of Zelle deposits missing from my Bank of America account. When I called customer service, they said ‘due to extenuating circumstances we cannot take your call’ and hung up.”
According to a report by TheStreet, as of 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, there have been 700 reports of outages submitted. 90% of these reports indicate problems with transferring funds through Zelle, while 8% of users are experiencing difficulty accessing their Zelle account. Customers have taken to Twitter to express how disruptive this issue has been for them.
According to a report by Bleeping Computer, Bank of America sent a message to its customers stating that transactions from January 14th to January 17th were delayed. The bank has also started the process of returning the missing funds to its customers.
The message from Bank of America read, “Zelle transactions made between January 14 and January 17 may be delayed in occurring and posting to accounts as requested. Transfers will be completed and will appear in your account activity and balances as soon as possible. We apologize for any delay or inconvenience.”
A report from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren stated that four banks reported over 190,000 cases of fraudulent transactions on Zelle, involving more than $213 million in payments during 2021 and the first half of 2022.
In most cases, the report stated that individuals were not reimbursed for the amount they were defrauded. Zelle did not comment on the matter when the report was published.
Warren criticized both Bank of America and Zelle on Twitter, saying “They are apparently failing customers again, with money somehow disappearing from accounts. This should be fixed immediately and customers should be compensated. I’ve called out serious fraud issues on Zelle and this is their latest failure.”
