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Fifth Third Bank recovers from system outage Friday

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December 9, 2019

Fifth Third Bank spent the weekend recovering from a network outage that caused banking issues on Friday.

The network was back up and running Friday night, but for several hours during the day, thousands of customers were unable to access their accounts online or pay for gas, food and other items using their debit cards due to problems with the bank's computer systems. 

The issues also caused disruptions for customers trying to use ATMs, according to a report in USA Today. 

At 1:35 p.m. eastern time on Friday, the bank tweeted: "We are experiencing an issue with our network. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service for our affected customers, and we apologize for the inconvenience." 

We are experiencing an issue with our network. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service for our affected customers, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

— Fifth Third Bank (@FifthThird) December 6, 2019

In a later tweet, the bank said that the issues were being gradually restored.  

Customers voiced their complaints on Twitter. 

"Car in shop. Need to get to work. Try to get an Uber only to have my card declined. Try to call customer service. Number doesn't work. Try to call fifth third branch and that doesn't work either. I can't afford to miss work," one customer tweeted Friday.  

"It’s literally my only day off to get things done and I have no gas. I can’t do anything and I work 16 hours tomorrow," another said in a tweet. 

Fifth Third Bank is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.