Customers report problems with Zelle transactions on their Bank of America accounts
Irate customers turned to social media Wednesday to report serious issues with their Bank of America and Zelle accounts. Some users are even saying money is missing from their accounts, with no clear explanation from either company as to why.
Bank of America and Zelle, a payment platform which millions of people use to send and receive money, didn't immediately respond to NPR's questions on what went wrong.
One user tweeted, "So cool how @BankofAmerica magically disappeared a large Zelle transaction that HAD ALREADY POSTED and I had used to pay bills. Now I'm extremely in debt in my checking and I can't get ahold of them. Unbelievable."
A Twitter account for Zelle support responded to angry customers saying that the problem seems to be with Bank of America.
In one response the account said, "The Zelle App & Network are up & running. We are aware of an issue that is impacting Bank Of America customers when sending & receiving payments. We recommend contacting Bank of America's customer support team for additional updates."
The website Downdetector reported a huge spike in outage reports with Bank of America at around 10:30 a.m. ET. Similarly, Downdetector reported a spike in Zelle customers flagging outages as early as around 9 a.m. ET.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted her criticism of both companies following customer reports. She said Bank of America and Zelle "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."
Warren has been critical of Zelle for some time and has called for more oversight of the platform. In a report issued last fall, Warren said fraudulent transactions on Zelle totaled almost half a billion dollars in 2021. [Copyright 2023 NPR]
