Royal Bank, Canada's largest bank, is working to clear up a massive transaction backlog as customers become more and more enraged waiting for their money.

The bank revealed on Wednesday that it had gotten behind in processing millions of transactions due to a glitch that occurred on Monday during a routine software upgrade.

Royal Bank executives took to the airwaves to reassure customers.

"The money is safe," said Micheline Martin, a Royal Bank senior vice-president. "The money is in the bank and the records are secure. The problem is, they don't show up on the screen."

Many provincial employees in Ontario and New Brunswick, whose payroll deposits are processed by Royal, are still waiting for their money.

Royal says it will waive transaction fees and interest charges, as well as charges from other banks and other "reasonable costs" on an individual basis.

"We are trying to make things right," said Gay Mitchell of Royal Bank. "We are a customer service organization at RBC and this is not the way we are at all happy with doing business.

"This has caused inconvenience. It has caused frustration and we're very sorry about that."

In an effort to deal with the problem, Royal extended its bank hours on Friday and will open more branches on Saturday to accommodate customers' needs.

The bank said it expects to have the backlog cleared up by Monday, but the fiasco may cause all Canadians to re-examine how technology fits into their lives.

"I think this underscores how difficult it is to recover from a massive technology glitch and my fear is it's going to get worse before it gets better, we're becoming more interconnected as a society," said technology expert Rick Broadhead.

With a report from CTV's David Akin