Interac e-Transfer service taken off line to address ‘internal technical issue’

By The Canadian Press

Interac says it has temporarily taken its e-Transfer service off-line to address an “internal technical issue” that has seen service disruptions for a number of customers trying to transfer money online.

“Financial institutions will not be able to process any transactions while we have the system off-line, nor will consumers be able to send or receive any Interac e-Transfer transactions,” Interac spokeswoman Colleen Harasymchuk said.

“The system and data remains secure,” she added.

The service was set to remain off line until at least 8 a.m. Saturday morning when the company said it hoped to have a “positive update” to report.

Interac reassured customers that “any transfers currently in transit are secure and will be processed when the system is back online.”

The company failed to respond to numerous Twitter and Facebook requests for more information about the outage. It wasn’t until someone posted a comment about the outage being related to a virus that originated overseas that the company responded, “not a virus.”

“We have an internal technical issue that we are working to resolve as quickly as possible. We will post updates as we find out more,” was their response on Facebook.

They also ruled out phishing scams and hacker attempts.

The company first announced the problem Thursday evening via Twitter, saying the service was unavailable and that teams were working to resolve the issue.

Interac announced about an hour later that the service had been restored, but then followed up with another tweet several hours after that saying that it was continuing to experience an issue.

The company says the e-transfer issue is not affecting its other services or products such as Debit, Flash, mobile, Online and Cash.

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