Moneris says systems back online after users across Canada report outages affecting debit, credit payments

A customer swipes a MasterCard debit card through a machine while checking out at a shop in Seattle, Nov. 2, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Elaine Thompson

The payment processing company Moneris says it has resolved an outage that appeared to affect debit and credit transactions across the country.

The company released a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, after 2 p.m. EDT Saturday saying, "Moneris has resolved a network outage and returned transaction processing to normal. Merchants may experience some transaction slowness while systems catch up."

Darren Leroux, director of communications for Moneris, added in a statement to CTV News that the "intermittent network outage" had affected customers' ability to process transactions for about 90 minutes.

Leroux said that Moneris continues to investigate the root cause but "there are no indications this appears to be cyberattack related and all transaction systems are functioning normally again."

The website Downdetector showed outage reports starting to come in around noon EDT for Interac. By 1:11 p.m. EDT, those reports had reached a peak of more than 2,700.

Users also reported issues with Visa, which reached a peak of more than 400 shortly before 1 p.m. EDT.

Outage reports for both Interac and Visa have since fallen.

Some users on X also have reported outages.

At least one company, London Drugs, responded to an X user saying, "Unfortunately all stores across Canada are having network problems and IT is working on this issue and hopefully will be resolved soon."

BC Ferries also said it experienced service disruptions "related to processing debit card and credit card transactions at terminals and on board vessels" on Saturday, which have since been resolved.

With files from CTV National News Parliament Hill Correspondent Kevin Gallagher