Sparkasse and Commerzbank affected
Card payments not possible – major disruption at several banks throughout Germany
Problems with card payments: At the savings banks alone, fault reporters recorded over 1,100 failures
© Bernd Feil / Picture Alliance
A disruption has been paralyzing card payments throughout Germany since the morning hours. Numerous Sparkasse and Commerzbank customers reported problems with cashless payments.
On Thursday morning, many people in Germany must have experienced a moment of shock. A major disruption is currently causing significant problems Card payment. Those affected include Sparkasse, Commerzbank and Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken.
Fault reports from almost all banks went off in the morning hours. It is still unclear how many banks were affected by the technical problems. According to the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”, the problems at the Sparkasse were at least resolved. According to the fault reporting portal “alletreib.de”, over 1,100 disruptions were recorded at savings banks alone. Many customers also expressed their surprise on social networks.
Card payment: No cause for failures found so far
A cause for the unusual problems cannot yet be clearly identified. Paying with EC cards in particular turned out to be difficult; credit cards occasionally worked.
Even if the banks are working on a solution to the problem, it cannot be ruled out that problems may continue to arise throughout the day.
Two years ago there were days of outages in cashless payments due to problems with card readers. Both Visa and Maestro cards were affected by the disruption, and for days in some shops it was only possible to pay in cash.
Sources:Cologne City Gazette,alldisorders.de, RND