Payments processor First Data experienced an outage that held up processing of certain credit and debit transactions for five hours on Friday (Dec. 4) morning.
The Atlanta-based company, which is the third largest payment processor in the country, said the outage was a result of malfunctioning hardware that affected its payments processing platform and led to the problem.
While the impact of the glitch wasn’t immediately clear, some of the companies that were primarily affected by it were SunTrust Banks and PNC Financial Services Group, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The problem caused the transaction services to go down between 6:45 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. EST, according to First Data. But for several small lenders, such as the Dubuque, Iowa-based Dupaco Community Credit Union, it extended for five hours straight.
“Our phones were flooded,” said Dupaco’s Todd Link, senior VP for risk management and remote delivery, speaking of the snafu at the morning rush hour. These kind of failures are “very rare,” he added.
The rush hour outage led many frustrated PNC customers to complain on Twitter, as they were forced to withdraw cash from ATMs to pay for their transactions.
Though PNC and SunTrust reportedly said the issues affecting transaction processing were a result of a First Data outage, some of the other small lenders said that the issues were caused by an “unnamed third party.”
“First Data’s technical support teams identified and contained the issue, and card authorizations have now been fully restored,” the company said in a statement, adding that the issues weren’t a result of any cyberattack or any kind of unauthorized transactions.
The company’s stock was trading at $17.25 per share on Friday afternoon, up from its $16 per share IPO value, WSJ reported. The company reportedly filed the biggest IPO of this year, which valued it at $40 billion.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More