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Australian Bank's System Outage Leaves 9 Million Customers Without Cash (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
National Australia Bank on Saturday suffered what it described as a "nationwide outage" to some of its technology systems, leaving customers unable to access banking services or withdraw money. Customers took to social media to vent their frustrations, with some saying they were left unable to pay for groceries or refuel their cars...
National Australia Bank is one of Australia's four largest retail banks with a customer base of 9 million, according to its website... The Bank of New Zealand, a NAB subsidiary, also experienced outages on Saturday across New Zealand, but the spokesman was unable to confirm a connection between the two incidents.
National Australia Bank is one of Australia's four largest retail banks with a customer base of 9 million, according to its website... The Bank of New Zealand, a NAB subsidiary, also experienced outages on Saturday across New Zealand, but the spokesman was unable to confirm a connection between the two incidents.
Always carry cash, and two different types of credit cards. I have a visa, mastercard and $200 cash on me, plus bank cards. Enough for some gas, food or a cheap hotel if needed.
The Reuters article is lacking details. news.com.au has a story with more details.
It appears that their payment processing was down too. So, not just retail customers with accounts at NAB, but also merchants who use them for payment processing were not able to accept payments. The article I read does not state that clearly, but the taxi patron seemed to complain that it was the inability of the cabbie to accept a card payment that was the problem, rather than that his own individual card did not work.
It sucks when you are the customer and the service fails, but moreso when you are the collateral damage.
Because progress!
Me, I tend to keep a bit of a cash reserve. But then I'm backward and old-fashioned like that.
Your emergency supplies - which you surely have - should include some cash.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
and when you go to an store that does not take cash>
Yep - all those hipster cafes that have signs up saying "EFTPOS only - no cash".
I wonder if they suddenly decided cash was OK after all?
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
In case I lose my wallet or there is a problem with the bank or whatever, I keep $10-$20 cash in car. That'll get gas to get me home or whatever.
At home, in the safe, I have enough cash to at least make it to the next pay day.
This is one the reasons why a cashless society is a bad idea. Suppose the electronic systems were down for a couple of weeks. How is one without cash going to buy food, fuel, essential medicine, and pay for the rent/mortgage? In fact this is one of the less important reasons why its a bad idea. A quick summary of the other reasons why a cashless society is bad:
- Government and the Corporations get to monitor EVERY transaction made. No privacy. Anything and everything may be used against you now or in the future.
- WIth the push of a button the Government (and perhaps the Banks too) can turn off your money.
- No money for rent/mortgage, food, essential medicine, or fuel.
- No money to pay the lawyer to fight it.
- Bank have absolute control of your money. You don't.
- Fees for every kind of transfer, even small ones. No other option. Its not like you can just pull your money out in cash.
- Fees for the storage of your money. Your money dwindles away if you don't spend it. They can motivate you to spend more by increasing fees, and/or charing negative interest.
- No way to opt out of dealing with the banks. Best option is maybe getting to switch banks.
- Banks can dictate how your spend your money -- increasing fees for payments to parties they don't like, or denying them altogether.
Yep I usually keep a hundred in my wallet and another 50 or so in the car somewhere for when I forget my wallet. I also ALWAYS have cards from 2 separate banks, especially when on holidays to avoid the sort of problem the NAB had, I have NAB cards, but also CBA and WESTPAC in australia so was unaffected (except the checkout at the supermarket took me 30 seconds longer as I had to hunt in my wallet for a second card after the NAB one was declined).
EFTPOS install kits, up until a few years ago, included vouchers for EFTPOS. These could be run through the imprinter machine, and then banked manually. Each merchant would have a floor limit for these transactions - which could be zero for debit cards - and if a transaction is more than that, they have to call a phone number where a computer would authorize the transaction. This computer system was probably down with the rest of the system...
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
One step closer to crypto currency acceptance
The backup for an electronic system is not another electronic system, it is analog ie paper. And we already have a paper based backup system for currency exchange that works quite well.
Yep I usually keep a hundred in my wallet and another 50 or so in the car somewhere for when I forget my wallet. I also ALWAYS have cards from 2 separate banks, especially when on holidays to avoid the sort of problem the NAB had, I have NAB cards, but also CBA and WESTPAC in australia so was unaffected (except the checkout at the supermarket took me 30 seconds longer as I had to hunt in my wallet for a second card after the NAB one was declined).
Yeah it's a bit if a no-brainer for those of us that are used to dealing with HA/DR type scenarios. Multiple card from multiple banks, plus cash, plus more cash elsewhere just in case.
While the bank can take the lion's share of blame for having flaky systems, the retailers and customers have to take some responsibility for not being prepared for such events.
Because in some countries, a lot of stores are going cashless. You may not have the choice.
I use this bank. The first I knew of this, I was in the supermarket buying groceries. When I went to pay, the machine said it needed a signature too. This is weird, I've never seen it before. So, I just did it and I got to walk out with my groceries.
Earlier I had bought a few more expensive things in a department store. It's entirely possible I wouldn't have been able to buy them then.
Apparently it was caused by a power outage to the mainframe. Maybe they should move this stuff off mainframes like everyone else has. Shrug.
One does NOT go to a store that does not take cash.
And these issues happen very very rarely and, even when they do the impact in minimal.
9 million people without cash? Bullshit. Technically I am a NAB customer as I have a NAB cc and a NAB savings account. They are literally never used and exist purely as a backup. I cannot remember the last time I used them. We have a population of ~25 million people, and while NAB is a major bank there is no way in hell they are the primary bank for 9 million.
I also use android pay for 99% of my store transactions and only ever use my card when I exceed the phone pay limit, which seems to be somewhere around $450. I would be lucky to use cash for 1 transaction a fortnight.
Finally while you may have been unable to do EFTPOS transactions out of your savings accounts credit cards still have offline capabilities. So if you were one of the really really rare people, who only has a savings account and only banks with NAB then maybe you would have had an issue if you tried to do something during the brief outage. Everyone else would have just used the office CC transaction model.
Let me guess... someone let a cert expire?
Well personaly my life is better wit cards only (98%of the time) I disslke hadeling cash because of sub par eyesight so checking chang takes me forever, a chi an pin transaction on the other hands takes less than 30 secondsfrom the time the pos has the total till Ikm done and no damed change. Ofc if the suystem either at mybank or at the posis down it rakes longer but well I’s so infreqent that it is akllmost a nn issue
And how often does it happen?
What backup systems would there be, other than cash? Payment systems meltdown very rarely - maybe once a year at the high end of the range, and usually only for a day tops.
Having manual cashless methods is not viable for something that infrequent - first off, retail turnover is high, while I know a retail store whose employees worked there for years, most retailers will have 200+% turnover rate, making training for such things pointless because chances are, it won't happen.
If it's something that happens more often, then yes it makes sense to do it. But it still happens really infrequently and while it sucks, you tend to just tolerate it.
I mean, I pump gas when the gauge goes around half or so - so if I can't pump gas one day because payment is down, I can pump it tomorrow, or the day after. There's nothing I generally do that requires me to have something bought immediately on that day that it cannot wait a day. And I have sufficient cash on hand to go through a couple of days worth of expenses (lunches and such, but even then I could whip something up from the pantry).
It happened again, about a month ago.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But hooray for a cashless society!
In India, this was done on purpose in 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It took more than 3 months before ATMs started working like normal. Lots of people died in lines outside banks.
The systems today really aren’t sufficiently robust to handle the contingencies.
Sad but true. This is a story about a one day outage. In the UK, the bank TSB has been having similar problems for over one month, due to what appears to have been a spectacular failure while trying to migrate to a new IT system.
I'm also in the camp that keeps a significant amount of cash in safe, always-accessible places these days, after seeing a few too many incidents where people were literally unable to get money out of bank accounts and the like in recent years. But even I would have run out of savings to live on by that point, I think.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This is what 40+ years of technical debt looks like.
Another symptom of this underlying issue at NAB: My NAB debit card simply doesn't work in London, in any ATM. It works everywhere else I've travelled in Europe and Asia. (Oh, except for 1 trip to Helsinki)
NAB has no idea why, and can't offer a solution (no, its not flagged/blocked, yes, its compatible with the ATM, yes, the network seems OK). But then, they have bigger fish to fry...
The issue isn't whether or not you can wait, it is the pure inconvenience. For example at the checkout with a cart full of groceries only to find your bank is currently offline (as happens to 10's of thousands of people for this incident, and also for the CBA incident not that long ago and then again for the ANZ incident). What do you do when you pump the gas only to then find your card is declined? you will be forced to leave a guarantee of some sort as well as the hugely inconvenient process of filling out forms and identification and a further trip back their with either cash or a working card, if you don't have that you are fucked. Once a year is more than enough incentive to have a spare card which costs nothing but a few minutes to apply for and get, even if it only saves you an hour every 5 years you are miles ahead. For me it saved me a good hour for just this incident, saved me many hours and a great deal of pain last time I was in the US only to find one of my cards had been skimmed so the bank had to cancel it while I was getting on a flight to London. So easy to have a safe DR solution so why the fuck not.
And how often does it happen?
What backup systems would there be, other than cash?
Cash was the backup system I was referring to. The people complaining didn't have any, and they're putting all the blame on other people.
and when you go to an store that does not take cash>
Modded funny and rightfully so.
A store you walk into and does not take cash has to be very specialised indeed. Pretty much the kind of business that doesn't really have stock on hand. In Australia, certain types of stores (supermarkets in particular) are obliged to accept cash, otherwise it's optional but you're going to find more cardless stores than cashless ones.
The last place I shopped at that was cashless preferred payment by bank transfer (faster payments here in the UK) and gave you a 5% discount for doing so over card payments.
So only a fool goes cashless. I couldn't manage it here in the UK, how else do I pay for parking, a drink, something to eat and any other small item and there are still a few businesses that do not have card machines.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.