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Chase online banking services still down

By Kathy Bergen and Becky Yerak

Posted Sep. 14, 2010 at 8:41 p.m.

Chase's online customers were unable to conduct business on the Web site of Chicago's biggest bank into Tuesday evening, the down time having stretched on for more than a day.

"It's an eternity in the online world," said Jacob Jegher, a senior analyst with Celent, a Boston-based financial services research and consulting firm.

Chase has 16.5 million customers who use its online services.

The biggest issue was the inability of customers to pay bills online, Jegher said.

"If you're a last-minute person in terms of paying your bills … you'll be unable to do it," he said. "The implications are late payments and fees."

Chase said it would work with customers who encountered such problems.

"Whatever the issue is, we're happy to talk with them," said spokesman Tom Kelly. He said customers' personal information and bank balances remain secure.

Chase said automatic payments haven't been affected.

As of Tuesday evening, the nation's second-largest bank did not have an estimate as to when its problem, which it describe as "technical," would be fixed.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon apologized for the glitch at a banking conference in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

In the absence of more specific information on what caused Chase's problem, speculation swirled on Twitter and online message boards.

There are many possibilities, said Jegher. "It could be a security and fraud issue, or it could be more basic, a technical glitch."

In January, some Bank of America customers had trouble accessing online accounts, but the problem was resolved in less than a day. From the outset, BofA ruled out a cyber-attack.

The "general rule is transparency and … get it out quickly,'" said public relations specialist Jonathan Dedmon, a principal at the Dilenschneider Group. However, "sometimes it just takes awhile to get all the facts and the confidence that the problem is being resolved correctly," he said.

The problem, which affected the Chase online sites for retail banking and credit card transactions, began Monday night.

This kind of glitch comes just as financial firms are finding it easier to get customers to go digital. Larger banks have made a massive push to encourage business to be handled online, both because it's less costly for the bank and because it's convenient for the customer.

And that push has worked. For the first time, more bank customers — 25 percent — prefer to bank online compared with any other method of transaction, a 2009 survey from the American Bankers Association showed. The Internet is the preferred banking mode for customers under age 55.

Roupen Demirdjian, owner of Middle Eastern restaurant Sayat Nova in Chicago, visited a Chase branch late Tuesday afternoon to cash a check. He said he often uses online banking to balance his account, as well as to pay bills. He said he didn't need to access to his online account immediately, but said he'd be upset if the system were down another day or two.

"Then I wouldn't be able to point and click," he said. "My check-writing isn't what it used to be."