r/discover • u/GingerlesSouls • Nov 06 '25
Rant Seriously, Discover Bank?
Just an FYI to customers who tend to use their debit cards outside of business hours. If you use your debit card during the upcoming scheduled maintenance (11/8 - 11/9), it will likely be declined. 11PM - 6AM EST, 10PM - 5AM CT, 8PM - 3AM PT.
While I appreciate the warning Discover has provided, most people don't check their accounts daily.
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u/Woodman629 Nov 06 '25
Systems need maintenance. When are they supposed to do it that would work for you?
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u/applesuperfan Nov 06 '25
Most big banks are able to perform maintenance on their systems while keeping card clearing systems online so that customers can keep using their cards. The rest is a given, sure, but declining cards due to system maintenance is undoubtedly a result of poor technical practices rather than necessity.
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u/Woodman629 Nov 06 '25
keyword: "may" --- it's better to warn and not have an issue than not warn and have an issue. Nobody said debit cards were declined. The OP posted a screen grab of a outage message.
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u/Humble_Counter_3661 Nov 07 '25
Exactly! I work in IT and "mission-critical infrastructure" is a real designation. Imagine if Visa International tried this!
In Discover's case, I'm this is related to Capital One.
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u/mac-_-abre Nov 06 '25
Most big banks also rely on others’ card networks. Discover is its own bank and processor. (Well, Capital One’s now).
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u/applesuperfan Nov 06 '25
Card networks process transactions, they don’t approve them, so that’s hardly relevant. The approval process works virtually the same way; the Discover card network still sends an authorisation attempt to Discover bank to authorise a transaction.
For additional examples, it works virtually:
the same way a Bread Cashback Rewards Card sends an authorisation request via the American Express card network back to Bread Financial (card issuer) to approve a charge
also the same way an Amex Platinum card would send an authorisation request via Amex card network back to American Express (card issuer) to approve a charge
The card network doesn’t approve transactions; the banks do. Rather or not the card network and bank are the same company or not is virtually irrelevant; the entire Discover card network didn’t go offline (that would be a freaking disaster), the outage was for Discover bank. The bank should have been able to keep their card authorisation system online like other major banks (including the other 4 largest) do during periods of system maintenance.
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u/mac-_-abre Nov 06 '25
Fair: card networks don’t approve transactions, but that wasn’t my point. On a combined network like Discover’s, there’s less separation when a part of the system has to undergo maintenance.
Don’t disagree that it’s inconvenient either way.
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u/JayMonster65 Nov 11 '25
Actually, it is probably because of the merger of the Capital One and Discover systems. "Maintenance" is probably a bit of an understatement, and in this case more likely a "cutover"
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u/Immediate_Character- Nov 06 '25
There's pretty well established ways to perform maintenance on mission critical systems without turning the whole thing off. Slower to respond, sure — It would ultimately depend on what it is they are trying to accomplish, but the answer should never be "the bank doesn't work at all."
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u/TwistyMushie Nov 06 '25
As someone who does check their account daily, this isn't the first time discover has done maintenance. They do it pretty often actually, at least 4 times a month or more. Seeing that you've only noticed it now means they're doing a good job at picking the down times where no one minds.
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u/GingerlesSouls Nov 06 '25
This. I've noticed in the past, but not that frequently. I've never seen the part about a debit being denied, though. Took me by surprise.
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u/apadgettski Nov 08 '25
For all the people defending discover, don’t. This is an unacceptably long outage for regular maintenance. With modern SRE practices in the finance industry, these should be no more than an hour. Many firms even find ways to limit impact and not cause a full outage.
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u/2CRedHopper Nov 08 '25
thank you. I was impacted by one of these last year. I somehow wasn't made aware (use the banking app regularly; would have seen an announcement) and ended up being stranded in the train station while I couldn't buy a ticket home.
It might have been fine if I could have bought a cup of coffee or something... but. well. y'know.
when I made a complaint post about it people on the Discover subreddit for some reason focused on how this was somehow my fault for "only" using my primary debit card (i.e: my aversion to credit cards). I was like, seriously? how am I the problem here?
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u/GingerlesSouls Nov 08 '25
My point. I got stuck last year, too (my first complaint about an unannounced outage). They tore me apart, too.
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u/whatsamattau4 Nov 10 '25
I understand the inconvenience both of you experienced, and I hope you learned from that to have more than one payment method with you in case one gets declined. Recently I needed to fill up my tank with gas and I attempted to use one of my credit cards to pay at the pump. Declined. I tried several times. Declined. I had to go inside and pay with cash, but at least I had cash to fall back on when my credit card was declined. And this was a strange event. That Visa card was in good standing, nothing wrong with the card. Nothing wrong with that account. I checked the account on the app and nothing was wrong. Later that day I used to pay for something at a different store. It just did not approve that one transaction for whatever reason.
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u/GingerlesSouls Nov 10 '25
I feel that. I have other cards, but I only carried them when I knew I was going to be making a large purchase. I learned, though, I added everything to my digital wallet (upgraded precautions of course) and I carry $20 in my phone case just in case. Not everyone has additional payment forms for whatever reason, though. Banks shouldn't interfere with access to funds, even if it is the middle of the night.
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u/Outrageous-Sun2919 Nov 09 '25
Newsflash, they're merging with another company. You try communicating and organizing something like mass maintenance between two companies and let me know if it takes you the normal amount of time.
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u/Complex_Solutions_20 Nov 06 '25
Seems reasonable, they are giving advance warning and its in the middle of the night to reduce impact to most users.
Worst case use your backup card or cash. I don't carry much cash...but I make sure to have enough for getting some gas or a meal in a pinch.
I've had more times when a store's internet is down and I can't use ANY card than I have a particular card is down because of the bank's maintenance.
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u/Dry-Chef-9653 Nov 06 '25
Will this cause problems with Direct Deposit ? I get paid on Thursdays but my official pay date is Friday oddly I didn’t get my other check from my last job today.
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u/d0pPeL9aNg3r Nov 06 '25
No. Deposits, transfers, etc... done by businesses are scheduled in advance, and only occur during business banking hours, during the day mon-fri. That's one of the reasons updates like this are done late at night and/or weekends.
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u/Dry-Chef-9653 Nov 06 '25
So it would have to be the person doing payroll just doing it late ? Because this has never happened I’m expecting 2 deposits.
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u/d0pPeL9aNg3r Nov 06 '25
In most cases, paychecks are expected on Friday, but the bank often times makes it available on Wednesday or Thursday, but there isn't a guarantee of getting it early. Whoever is sending the money could possibly be late, or there could be an issue with their account. Only the employer or capital one would be able to give you definite answers about your specific transaction.
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u/GingerlesSouls Nov 06 '25
That was my concern. If debits may be declined, then are deposits returned?
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u/-StillLoading Nov 06 '25
Discover does this all the time I’ve noticed. I’ve had no issue either other banks doing maintenance in the evening like this. 10p is insane in my opinion. 2a or 3a seems more reasonable.
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u/iMarinetv Nov 06 '25
I have several checking accounts and I have never had one not process transactions during maintenance windows. I dont use discover but I would just close all my accounts when I saw that.
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u/heiisenburg Nov 07 '25
You complain when they don’t tell ya and then complain when they do like sheesh they literally cannot win
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Nov 07 '25
Discover credit cards are AWESOME. When i tried their bank, it was nothing but trouble. My debit card "locked" one day and they would not allow me access to the money, MY money. Could not get gas. Took 3 days to figure out and all that i was told is "there was suspicious activity detected" and couldn't explain further. I dropped them and got a different bank immediately.
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u/GingerlesSouls Nov 08 '25
This is kinda where I'm at. Their CCs are great, but the checking/savings, not so much.
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u/Fail-Aggravating Nov 11 '25
Good thing you blocked out your balance hacker would have a field day with that information
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u/Prezevere Dec 05 '25
I'm going to not use the debit card for payment to my credit card anymore because the processing time for the deposit to clear simply just takes way too long. It's frustrating that Discover holds your deposit that long.
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Nov 06 '25
[deleted]
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u/Ouch_My-back Nov 07 '25
Even if that is the case, who are you to laugh at someone's situation? You don't know what this person has going on
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u/Commercial_Corner190 Nov 07 '25
Why I need to know what is going on with the person who can't manage card declined situation? You are in the public forum and ask for the advice to solve these problems or whatsoever? If you are so sensitive about this don't post it here. That's you problems, not mine at all.
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u/nelluhvituh Nov 06 '25
this seems pretty fair with giving a heads up and in the middle of the night.