Major Canadian banks went offline for hours blocking access to online and mobile banking as well as e-transfers for customers.
The banks reportedly hit by the outage include Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), BMO (Bank of Montreal), Scotiabank, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).
Online banking and e-Transfers down for many
Canada's major banks went offline yesterday impeding access to e-Transfers, online and mobile banking services for many.
Reports of users having trouble getting to their online banking peaked between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, although BleepingComputer is continuing to see an influx of these reports into today:
"We are currently experiencing technical issues with our online and mobile banking, as well as our phone systems," an RBC representative confirmed.
"Our experts are investigating and working to get this fixed as quickly as possible, but we have no ETA to provide at this time. We appreciate your patience."
A few hours later, within half an hour of RBC stating that all systems were back up, customers continued to report issues:
RBC customer Andrew Currie reported having "no access to my money at the grocery store" and being stuck in the checkout line for half an hour due to the outage.
BMO customers also saw the bank's "Global Money Transfer service" being down "all day" with transfers getting auto-rejected for no obvious reason. A BMO representative directed such customers to reach out to the customer service.
CIBC didn't acknowledge any issues with their online banking.
TD Bank's mobile banking app reportedly locked users out, with customer service representatives responding that they "haven't been advised of recent issues with our online service through EasyWeb."
A TD Bank spokesperson told BleepingComputer that TD Bank did not experience any widespread system outage or issue.
Some had trouble at the ATMs, although it isn't clear at this time if that is because of the outage. An RBC representative appears to convey that the customer having ATM issues is using an older debit card:
Emergencies Act imposes rules on some transfers
The cause of the outage is yet to be known but its timing is rather interesting, just days after the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act amid ongoing 'Freedom Convoy' protests.
On Monday, at a Parliament Hill press conference, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland explained the new regulations that payment service providers need to adhere to, under the newly invoked Emergencies Act.
"These illegal blockades must be lifted, and they will be.
In invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions.
First, we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules, so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all forms of transactions including digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies.
The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated to report to The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada or FINTRAC.
As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with FINTRAC, and they must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC.
This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds."
Additionally, the Emergencies Act authorizes banks to freeze accounts of individuals and businesses that they suspect to be affiliated with the illegal blockades, without requiring a court order and without incurring any civil liability.
As the Deputy PM states though, as banks are already obligated to report to FINTRAC, it remains unclear how would new legislation trigger a planned or sudden, unexpected downtime.
Updates:
10:50 AM ET: Added statement from TD Bank that states they were not impacted.
11:18 AM ET: Added archived copy of RBC tweet.
Comments
mrsleep - 2 years ago
' it remains unclear how would new legislation trigger a planned or sudden, unexpected downtime.'
We call that a test.
AlexandarGabriel - 2 years ago
Protest isn't illegal in Canada, the fact that you repeatedly claim that these protests are shows that you are just another propagandist.
Is it worth it to sell your soul like this? What you are doing is not moral.
rp88 - 2 years ago
Government intrusion on private banking rights (and whether the mass outages are part of or an unintended consequence of Trudeau's intrusion or whether the ' "emergency" act ' enabled intrusions have yet even started is unknown I think) will serve only to galvanise those who were slightly with the truckers to be fully committed to assisting the "freedom convoy". If the state attacks all your assets you've nothing to lose by driving to Ottawa and joining the new car/truck parking areas around the parliament. If Trudeau wants this to end with his primeministership intact he'll start negotiating rather than trying to claim that peaceful protests are a bigger emergency than covid itself. Its not like the truckers are saying that people who want masks, vaccines and anything else cannot have those measures for themselves.
mynameisgod - 2 years ago
I'm giving my bank (TD) the benefit of the doubt, but if it emerges that Castro, I mean Trudeau is behind this, then all my accounts will be closed immediately.
Also, F Canada.
Trudeauhater - 2 years ago
This has everything to do with communist dictator Justin Trudeau's emergency Act and the cooperating Banks through Bank of Canada to Monitor and sees those bank accounts people who help the protesters. I'm disgusted Health Canada has turned into a dictatorship with only the government and Banks and police system working together to overthrow our freedoms. Those protesters are peaceful I know because I was there and this is false propaganda to discredit the protest because it threatens Justin Trudeau's agenda and career.. perhaps we should withdrawal all our money out of the banks and see how that impacts the economy
UG26 - 2 years ago
Looks like state sponsored hacking to me: covert economic warfare against political opposition. This just demonstrates a more urgent need to create public networks and decentralize our financial systems. But cryptocurrencies that require mining are too inefficient, and blockchain does not scale very well, and the typical small business cannot use Bitcoin because the price is too volatile. We need to invent something else which addresses all of these obstacles.