Twice in a Week: Wells Fargo Mobile Payments Apps Go Down

February 11, 2019         By: Steven Anderson

It’s safe to say that Wells Fargo has had its share of problems in recent months, and that the company needs to do everything it can to keep customers around. It would be safe to say, in fact, that customers should be enjoying an absolute renaissance right now as Wells Fargo moves heaven and earth to keep customers in the fold. Well, that’s before this week hit, and two separate outages struck the online banking and mobile app, a move that left customers enraged across social media.

Thursday morning marked the second such outage, reports noted, as Wells Fargo took to social media itself and pleaded for patience, which is pretty much the last thing you want to say to a crowd of angry people wanting their money and already fed up with chicanery. Others reported that Wells Fargo payment cards were being actively declined, which only made matters worse.

However, the latest outage was hardly complete, as Wells Fargo noted that customers could still access accounts through ATMs, customer service representatives (presumably those in bank branches) and in stores. Wells Fargo noted that a “systems issue” was causing intermittent outages, which suggested that the system may have been working as they spoke, but may have stopped working the second they stopped talking.

Wells Fargo also noted on its Twitter feed that “smoke was detected following routine maintenance.” The Twitter feed itself was a river of fire in responses, with one user noting that one facility’s shutdown should not have crashed the whole system. Said user noted that “…Jurassic Park had better fail safes.”

All this adds up to the latest blow that Wells Fargo did not need. After launching a massive ad campaign detailing how 2018 was Wells Fargo’s “re-established” year, multiple system failures in the space of a week wasn’t exactly welcome news. It demonstrates to us all, and indeed to mobile payments providers as well, that backups are absolutely vital. Without them, you’re one catastrophe away from being completely hamstrung, and that’s a disaster for most any business.

Wells Fargo didn’t need another hit like this. Now it’s got to work that much harder just to keep its customers from actively jumping ship, let alone staying in the fold to begin with.