Multiple deposit delays across US banks linked to ACH system error

Several major banks across the United States are currently experiencing deposit delays, according to a report from CNN on Nov. 3.

That report suggests that Bank of America, Chase Bank, US Bank, Truist Bank, and Wells Fargo are among the banks that have experienced issues.

The issue concerns the Automated Clearing House (ACH), U.S. payment network that is widely used to transfer funds between American, and sometimes international, bank accounts. CNN cited an announcement from the U.S. Federal Reserve indicating that the error originated with ACH’s private sector operator, Electronic Payment Network (EPN). Specifically, an error at EPN on Nov. 2 caused certain data elements to be obscured, which prevented financial institutions from processing ACH transfers.

CNN also obtained a statement from Greg MacSweeney, a spokesperson for the Electronic Payment Network’s operator, The Clearing House. MacSweeney stated that the issue is the result of a manual error rather than a cybersecurity issue. He added that The Clearing House is working with affected financial institutions on the issue.

The ACH outage will only delay deposits and will not affect customers’ overall bank balances, according to CNN and its various sources.

Crypto exchanges mostly unaffected

Though many crypto exchanges handle ACH transfers, few, if any, of those companies have explicitly stated that they were affected by the service outage.

Kraken reported delays involving CustomersBank Wire on Nov. 2 but did not mention ACH; it said that the issue has now been resolved. Gemini reported unresolved issues on Nov. 3 involving its credit card but once again did not mention ACH.

Coinbase, eToro, and Crypto.com, all of which are known to support ACH transfers, did not report any issues on their respective status pages. Binance.US, meanwhile, has disabled ACH and wire transfers since June as the result of legal action from regulators and later failed partnerships within the banking system.

Regardless, any cryptocurrency exchange that processes deposits via ACH may have been affected in the same manner as traditional financial institutions.