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.

Comments

Always carry cash

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Always carry cash

[arglebargle_xiv]

Always carry cash, and two different types of credit cards. I have a visa, mastercard and $200 cash on me, plus bank cards

I always carry a Smith and Wesson. With one of those, I find I can get as much cash, credit cards, and jewellery and watches as I want.

Here is a better source

[El Cubano]

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.

There's a lesson here

[JaredOfEuropa]

Your emergency supplies - which you surely have - should include some cash.

and when you go to an store that does not take cas

[Joe_Dragon]

and when you go to an store that does not take cash>

Cashless Society == Bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Australia is pretty much cashless

[Harlequin80]

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.