Electronic banking services were experiencing serious disruption all over Norway on Monday for the second time in recent weeks,and technicians were scrambling to pinpoint the cause of the trouble. The technical problems were hindering use of card terminals, automated teller machines (minibanks) and online banking.
The latest round of trouble began around midday and Stein-Arne Tjore of Nets Norge, which delivers electronic payment services for banks and merchants, couldn’t say when the disruption might end. “We’re working hard to find out where the error lies,” Tjore told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).
Tjore confirmed that individual cards weren’t being activated by the machines, and thus couldn’t be used. Nor was it possible to get cash out of the minibanks and only some cards contained what he called “reserve solutions” that make them functional.
Norway’s biggest bank, DNB, was affected as were Nordea and Sparebanken 1. “Our netbank is down and there are problems with card traffic,” Jørgen Lønnquist at Nordea told news bureau NTB. Skandiabanken was reporting problems with both its Bank ID and eFaktura payment system. So was DNB.
“Our bank customers can’t log into netbank, and when the minibanks and automatic payment systems don’t function, it means most bank services are down at the moment,” Aud-Helen Rasmussen of DNB told NRK. “The situation is therefore critical.”
Rasmussen, like the other banks, said they were dependent on Nets solving the problem and couldn’t say when bank services would be back to normal. “But we know that all possible resources are being used to solve this,” she told NRK.
newsinenglish.no staff
