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Tech issue affecting debit vendor leaves some Canadians unable to make purchases

Toronto, Nov. 11/09 - A person exits a store on Queen Street East in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with an Interac sign as well as Visa and MasterCard signs. Photo By Deborah Baic The Globe and Mail

Update: Interac tweeted Sunday at 6:44 p.m. ET that the issue has been resolved.

“An earlier external vendor issue that impacted INTERAC Debit, INTERAC Online Payments and mobile payments has now been resolved and service has been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience,” Interac wrote.

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Some customers across Canada had trouble taking out money from ATMs and buying items in-store or online Sunday in what Interac described as a vendor service issue.

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Adrienne Vaughan, Interac’s manager of external communications, told Global News in an email that the Interac debit network was still functional but it was a vendor that was experiencing the “connectivity issues.”

“The Interac debit network is functioning normally, however one of our vendors is experiencing connectivity issues that are impacting their service. We are working with the vendor to resolve the issue,” said Vaughan.

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The extent of the service issue and how many customers were affected is unknown, but the service outage appears to be widespread.

“There isn’t one specific area that has been impacted,” Vaughan said. “As it is a vendor issue, we don’t have the details of concentrated areas that are impacted.”

Some customers took to social media to express their frustration, with many indicating that their credit union debit cards were the ones that were affected.

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A few credit unions also took to social media to say that their Interac debit, online payment and Apple pay systems were down.

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Kevin Stevenson, a shopper from Winnipeg, told Global News that when he went to make a purchase from a Petro-Canada, they had a sign indicating that Interac was down.

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“Works at Rona. Well as long as it’s not a Credit Union. Seems to be a Credit Union problem.” said Stevenson.

Ontarian Jenn Modeland said that three debit machines didn’t work for her. “I’m with a Credit Union and two debit machines were Manulife ones; can’t remember the third ATM I tried,” wrote Modeland in a message to Global News.

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