Sparkasse and Commerzbank affected
Card payments not possible for a short time – major disruption at several banks has probably been resolved
Problems with card payments: At the savings banks alone, fault reporters recorded over 1,100 failures
© Bernd Feil / Picture Alliance
A disruption brought card payments to a standstill across Germany in the early hours of the morning. Numerous Sparkasse and Commerzbank customers reported problems with cashless payments. According to the German Savings Banks and Giro Association, the problem has now been resolved.
On Thursday morning, many people in Germany must have experienced a moment of shock. A major disruption caused significant problems Card payment. The Sparkasse and Commerzbank were among those affected. When asked by dpa, a spokeswoman for the German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) confirmed that payments in stores with the Girocard from the savings bank group were not possible for around two hours in the morning. The outage has now been resolved. A spokeswoman for the Federal Association of Volks- und Raiffeisenbank also said that she currently had no reports of disruptions at institutions in the group.
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 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.
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.
A notice: This text has been updated
Sources:Cologne City Gazette,alldisorders.de, RND