Storms Freeze Online Banking for Unclear Number of Fiserv Credit Unions

Everything is bigger in Texas – including outages. The winter storms that have paralyzed much of the state have impacted an unknown number of credit unions because of critical issues with Fiserv servers located in Texas. Days into the outage, one credit union CEO said she is fed up with the fintech company.

Headquartered in Brookfield, Wis., Fiserv has a number of servers located in the Lone Star State.

Nearly 2,000 miles from Fiserv’s servers and virtual branch systems in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas, a credit union in New Bedford, Mass., is on its fourth day of experiencing critical outages to mobile banking, online banking and bill pay services that are powered by Fiserv.

In an interview with CU Times on Thursday, Berta Varao, president/CEO of New Bedford Credit Union, put the situation for her members and credit union in very blunt terms. “This has impacted us tremendously and has adversely affected our members since Monday,” she said.

According to the NCUA, NBCU has more than $140 million in assets and more than 10,000 members along the southern coast of Massachusetts.

Varao said her credit union was notified Monday morning by Fiserv of the server problems due to the historic winter storm that wiped out power for millions of Texans. NBCU posted a pop-up message on its website notifying members of the service problems. “For the most part, members are understanding, but some are very upset,” she said.

While she said she understands the severity of the storm, she emphasized her members rely on NBCU’s digital banking abilities. “Our digital services are crucial – this is a pandemic!”

Varao said she has not been pleased with how Fiserv has communicated with her and has become frustrated with the entire experience. She said a communication from Fiserv on Thursday indicated that all systems were up and running and stable. “[As of] about 20 minutes ago, all systems are back down,” she explained.

CU Times reached out to Fiserv for information about the outage credit unions have experienced this week. Fiserv emailed the following statement:

“Earlier this week online banking services at a subset of our credit union clients were interrupted due to weather-related power outages. Service has been restored for the majority of affected clients, and is in the process of being restored for a remaining few. We apologize to our clients and their members for the inconvenience.”

Fiserv did not address specific problems that have occurred due to the outage or how many credit unions have been impacted.

According to Varao, she was told that Fiserv servers lost power and backup generators ran out of fuel after the storms hit Texas on Sunday and early Monday. There were media reports that Fiserv was physically moving servers out of Texas and into Georgia.

For the moment, Varao isn’t sure what to do.

“I have lost a lot of faith in what has happened with Fiserv. They obviously don’t have a robust system,” she said, adding, “We are at their mercy.”