A technical problem brought down online banking and other services Thursday at TruStone Financial, a fast-growing credit union with 13 branches in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

"This morning we just had a technical issue and online banking's been down," said Hans Iverson, the credit union's chief operating officer. A piece of hardware failed, Iverson said, and the credit union operated on a backup system.

As of early Thursday evening, TruStone's website said that online banking wasn't available and that the credit union was "working diligently to restore services."

All the branches remained open Thursday and members could carry out transactions with some limits, though the credit union had some delays on transactions and updating balances.

"No member data was ever in jeopardy," Iverson said.

Headquartered in Plymouth and formerly the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Credit Union, TruStone has nine locations in the Twin Cities, one in St. Cloud and four in the Milwaukee area.

John Hansen, whose girlfriend is a TruStone member, said they were paid for cat-sitting by a client early Thursday morning. But the transaction never showed up in her account.

He went to online banking, and it was down, and then he went to the TruStone branch in Uptown, where an assistant manager told him his account information wasn't available, and that he couldn't withdraw more than $200 from the branch.

He could withdraw $320 from an ATM, which he did, but he wasn't able to see his balance on the ATM. With online and banking by phone down, Hansen was a little worried.

"Things are not normal," Hansen said. "Why did this happen?"

Iverson said a $200 withdrawal limit is not across the board, and tellers do have access to most members' account information.

Adam Belz • 612-673-4405 Twitter: @adambelz