The CrowdStrike outage that impacted airlines, banks and media outlets around the world last Friday didn’t affect the major U.S. card networks, even though their cardholders may have felt the effects.
Both Visa, the biggest card network company, and no. 2 Mastercard said their networks were operating smoothly on Friday, despite the snarls caused by a faulty CrowdStrike cybersecurity update to Microsoft systems.
"There is no indication of any impact on Visa's ability to process payments from this issue,” a spokesperson for the company said Friday. “Our systems are operating normally. We are aware of reports of people being unable to make payments and are working with our financial institution clients to understand any impact on their services to cardholders and merchants."
While the networks may have been unscathed, that didn’t mean that banks that issue their cards and retailers weren’t roiled by the CrowdStrike snafu. The effects of the CrowdStrike misstep on cardholders were felt at stores in the United Kingdom in the early morning hours on Friday, according to news reports from that time zone that runs ahead of the U.S.
Because that timing was just after midnight for the Eastern time zone, and the IT issue was addressed within hours, cardholders stateside likely encountered fewer problems. At least one analyst is saying that the overall fix was expected to take longer.
“Early this morning, it was reported that a faulty (CrowdStrike) software update has caused millions of Microsoft Windows systems to crash, thus resulting in significant business disruption to many global organizations,” according to a report from Mizuho Securities analysts Friday. “A fix has been deployed, but we expect the full recovery and remediation process could take days.”
JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank and the biggest issuer of credit cards in the country, felt the CrowdStrike outage, but the bank said that it didn’t have an impact on its cardholders.
“There was no direct impact to our credit card business as a result of the CrowdStrike outage,” a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase said.
Other major card issuers were reticent when asked to comment on how the outage affected their cardholders. A spokesperson for Wells Fargo declined to comment on whether the bank's card transactions were impacted. A spokesperson for Capital One didn't respond to a request for comment.
In any case, the trouble at Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike and its client, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, underscored how any hiccup in financial institutions’ digital ecosystem can ripple across the broader international financial system.
“The CrowdStrike outage highlights the interconnected nature of the modern risk landscape,” Moody’s banking industry analyst Chris Stanley said by email. “Beyond credit, banks navigate a spectrum of risks and opportunities.”
Mastercard offered a statement similar to Visa’s statement. “There is no indication that these issues are impacting our systems,” the spokesperson for that company said Friday.
The smaller network operated by Discover Financial Services, which also operates a bank, was also unaffected. “No Discover Global Network systems were impacted by the issues stemming from the CrowdStrike software update today,” a spokesperson for that company said by email Friday.
American Express didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
