In many supermarkets and shops it was not possible to pay with debit, credit or giro cards for several hours on Thursday. The problem was resolved in the afternoon.
Since early this morning, there have been disruptions to card payments across the country. This was explained by a spokesperson for the Sparkassen financial group t-online. The problems affected debit, credit and giro cards, it was said.
In individual cases, payments by direct debit were still possible with debit cards. “Bank and savings bank ATMs are not affected by this,” said the spokesperson. The problems were not limited to individual institutions. Bayerischer Rundfunk and Antenne Bayern had previously reported on this.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is aware “that various financial institutions are experiencing disruptions in card payment transactions,” the authority said. “The BSI is in contact with those affected and the responsible authorities.”
The reason for the disruption was problems with an IT service provider and with providers connected to it, said the spokesperson for the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. “We are currently analyzing the situation and the nature and extent of the disruption together with payment system operators and providers.”
In response to further enquiries, the statement said that a cyberattack could be ruled out based on current knowledge.
The IT service provider affected is First Data, which belongs to the US group Fiserv, a company spokesperson said upon request.
t-online asked several retailers whether they were affected by the problem.
Aldi North informed us in writing that there had been problems. However, these had been resolved since 2:15 p.m.
An employee of Edeka In a conversation with t-online, Edeka said that there were also massive problems and that customers could only pay with cash. However, according to the company’s press office, the problems only occurred in some regions. The problems have now been resolved, Edeka told t-online.
Rewe, Penny, dm and Rossmann say that they have not experienced any problems. “We currently do not see any irregularities in the processing of card payments at dm. We have not received any customer inquiries in this regard either.” The reason for this is “a problem with an IT service provider that we at dm are not currently working with.” Rewe specified that there had been problems with the service provider Nexi.
Other dealers we contacted have not been able to provide us with any clear information as of now (4:10 p.m.).
In the afternoon, the German banking industry confirmed the feedback that t-online had already received from many retailers: the problem had been resolved. Payments were again “possible with all cards as usual”.
