Interac says its e-Transfer service is back online [Update]

Update – July 2st, 7:00am: After 2 days of outage, Interac has confirmed its e-Transfer service is fully resorted with all major financial instituations and back online.

A message on its website noted, “This was not an attack on our system. It was an internal technical issue. Our system and data remained secure throughout the disruption.”

The INTERAC e-Transfer service is back online fully operational among all financial institutions. Read more at interac.ca

— INTERAC (@INTERAC) July 2, 2017

Interac’s official Twitter account has tweeted that the payment platform is currently ‘experiencing technical difficulties.’

It seems the company’s technical issues are limited to its e-transfer service, but we’ve reached out to Interac for clarification. Interac’s e-transfer service allows users to send and receive money using email and text.

We are experiencing technical difficulties impacting the INTERAC e-Transfer service. We are working to resolve ASAP. Stay tuned.

— INTERAC (@INTERAC) June 30, 2017

Back in April 2016, Interac said it hit its highest use point ever, with 158 million e-transfers in Canada — the majority of which were mobile interactions. This was an almost 50 percent increase in volume from the previous year, wrote Interact at the time in a press release.

Update – July 1st, 3:00pm: While Interac e-Transfers are still facing issues and downtime, the company stated that the service will be “online later today.”

Current INTERAC e-Transfer statement. We anticipate having service back online later today. pic.twitter.com/kIW2LTnXG4

— INTERAC (@INTERAC) July 1, 2017

Update 06/30/17 5:14: Interac has released a new statement regarding the e-transfer outage:

Interac Association/Acxsys Corporation (“Interac”) has temporarily taken the Interac e-Transfer service offline effective June 30, 2017 at 4:15 p.m. to allow us to best address technical difficulties with the service. This is an internal technical issue which has resulted in transactional delays, causing a number of transfers to be suspended. The system and data remains secure.

Financial institutions will not be able to process any transactions while we have the system offline, nor will consumers be able to send or receive any Interac e-Transfer transactions. Our top priority is making the Interac e-Transfer service fully operational as quickly as possible. We are working closely with our technology partners and making every effort to bring the platform back up so that we can again begin processing transactions efficiently. Any transfers currently in transit are secure and will be processed when the system is back online.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. No other Interac services or products are affected. Interac Debit, Interac Flash, mobile Interac products, Interac Online, and Interac Cash are operating normally and customers can continue to use them as usual.We are in contact with affected financial institutions and will continue to update them directly. We will continue to provide updates on the situation as we have additional information. @INTERAC and Facebook for regular updates.

Update 06/30/17 4:02pm: Interac has now stated that it’s taking its full service offline while it figures out the technical issue.

“Interac e-transfer is currently unavailable,” reads the company’s notice. “We have temporarily taken the Interac e-Transfer service offline in order to address technical difficulties resulting in transactional delays and suspended transfers. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. Follow us on Twitter (@INTERAC) or visit our website for updates.”

Update 06/30/17 12:32pm: Interac has sent the following statement to MobileSyrup regarding the outage.

“We are experiencing a significant technical difficulty impacting the Interac e-Transfer service resulting in service delays and disruptions. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Some financial institutions have suspended the Interac e-Transfer service. To check on the availability of service or status of particular transfers, customers should contact their financial institution directly.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the situation. Other Interac products and services are not affected. We will continue to provide updates on the situation as we have additional information.”