Norway’s largest bank, DNB, was experiencing more trouble this week with its online banking and automatic payment system, and blamed it on errors and problems at its supplier, Evry. The bank urged customers not to call the bank, claiming the errors would be corrected, while Evry’s contract with DNB was reportedly hanging by a thread.
A notice on DNB’s own website, with a headline urging customers to “read this before you call,” confirmed that some customers haven’t been able to make online payments or transfer funds, while other transactions have been recorded twice.
‘A bit strange’
“If you’re waiting for deposits or think your transactions look a bit strange, this will be corrected automatically,” the bank wrote. “You can of course call us, but if want to avoid being put on hold, be assured that these temporary mistakes will correct themselves without you having to do anything.”
Customers expecting payments from state welfare agency NAV, such as monthly pension income, “were on their way,” the bank stated. “We’re working as fast as we can to get the money into your accounts.”
DNB’s online and mobile phone banking was plagued by technical problems for around 12 hours on Wednesday, trouble that supplier Evry in turn blamed on a power failure. It was the third time in the past week that DNB was hit by widespread technical problems that left some customers unable to use their bankcards in addition to the online banking errors.
Latest in a series of problems
The trouble at Evry has also caused major problems for DNB earlier in the year, and last year, and has affected several other banks including SpareBank1 and Skandiabanken. Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported that Evry’s top officials were being called in for a crisis meeting and now face losing their contract with DNB.
DN reported Thursday that Evry officials had a crisis meeting of their own after being up all night trying to fix Wednesday’s trouble. “We view this as serious,” said Evry’s communications director Geir Remman. His counterpart at DNB wasn’t satisfied.
“We are completely dependent on being able to deliver stable operations for our customers,” DNB’s Thomas Midteide told DN. “We are going to have a tough meeting with Evry after all these serious incidents.” At stake, Midteide noted, is a NOK 2.7 billion contract between DNB and Evry that Midteide said can be cancelled in the event of operational failure.
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
