2016 Eftpos bug now affecting other banks

Tuesday January 5, 2010

It seems the Bank of Queensland computer bug is not alone with more reports of more banks being impacted by the internal computer time error, setting Eftpos machines six years in the future in January 2016.

In what is being referred to as a delayed Y2K bug issue, the computer glitch has resulted in many businesses being unable to process their customer's transactions whose cards are being deemed as "expired" with their expiring dates well before 2016. Previously thought to just be an issue for the Bank of Queensland, it has now been confirmed that more banks are being affected including Commonwealth Bank-owned BankWest, Cuscal merchant outlets and even German banks Postbank and Commerzbank.

As of yesterday it is only the EFTPOS terminals that are confirmed as being affected by this computer glitch with ATMs apparently unaffected.

A Bank of Queensland spokeswoman released a statement earlier in the week outlining the issue, although it could not be confirmed how many of 8000 Eftpos terminals were affected.

''There is an issue with the time and date stamp on Bank of Queensland Eftpos terminals and we are working with our service providers, Keycorp and First Data, to address this issue as a priority,'' a Bank of Queensland spokeswoman said.

''As of yesterday afternoon, we have a manual workaround in place and are continuing to investigate the root cause.''

This manual workaround was either carbon vouchers that the banks had provided or other electronic means that could bypass the time error.

Additionally, several banks SMS alert systems are also affected, with the Windows Mobile software dating any text messages as 2016.

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