Debit Card / ATM Failure

EarthBoy

Azrael_1701 wrote: »

It was everyone, as in every ATM and Point of sale wasn't working for anyone....

This is completely untrue. If it was correct it would have been on the BBC website, as it has in the past when things like this have actually happened.

As I said, the system was working fine for me, and it was working for glider3560 as well.

Azrael_1701 is probably a troll, just on here to provoke a reaction from people.

glider3560

EarthBoy wrote: »

As I said, the system was working fine for me, and it was working for glider3560 as well.

I've just double checked my receipts from yesterday. I used my HSBC Visa debit at 10:45 and 10:54. Both receipts have auth codes, so occurred online. Also used my Nationwide card at a Natwest ATM at 11:01 which worked fine, as it did for the other 5 people in front of me.

JacksterD

The point of sale systems, like Visa and Mastercard, were working fine yesterday, but the cash withdrawal system seemed to be down. You could still withdraw money from your own bank's ATMs, but for an hour or two you couldn't withdraw from another bank's ATMs.

At the PO we had a number of people come in who couldn't withdraw money, since we just use the same system as the ATMs do for cash withdrawals, but all the Bank of Scotland customers said they could still withdraw from the Bank of Scotland ATM next door, even though when they tried to withdraw at the PO they were being given an error.

EarthBoy

JacksterD wrote: »

.. but the cash withdrawal system seemed to be down. You could still withdraw money from your own bank's ATMs, but for an hour or two you couldn't withdraw from another bank's ATMs.

It must have affected some banks, but not others. I withdrew from a Yorkshire Bank ATM at 11.30 using my Nationwide card and it worked fine. glider3560 used a Nationwide card at the NatWest at 11.01 without any problems either.

jordanb84

there was defo some atm's and point of sale terminals down, my girlfriend woorks in a bank call center for the bank of scotland and yorkshire banks and all they did all day saturday was receive calls from customers stating they couldnt get any cash out.

Azrael_1701

EarthBoy wrote: »

Azrael_1701 is probably a troll, just on here to provoke a reaction from people.

Excuse me?

Not_a_Newbie

Azrael_1701 wrote: »

Excuse me?

My response exactly. Must make me a troll too seeing as I agreed with you Az!

We tried 4 different cash machines yin Hexham and couldn't get any cash out of our Cahoot, A&L and Nationwide accounts.

Only spent the £20 I had in my purse (and that included my hubby getting a hair cut!), although I did make up for it today though!!

JacksterD

Limit wrote: »

But if the ATM couldnt contact the bank over LINK wouldnt it have tried over Visa/Maestros (Mastercards) network?

That's a good question, I wonder why it didn't. Perhaps there is no such thing as an actual Visa or Mastercard ATM network. It's possible that the Visa and Mastercard ATM services are just layers which allow a Visa or Mastercard to use any country's local ATM network - in the UK that would be LINK. Basically that would mean instead of every debit card having to hold applications on their chips for every single country's ATM network, they just have to know how to interact with the Visa or Mastercard ATM application which will then be able to deal with each country's proprietary ATM system.

Who knows

Olipro

I don't know for sure, but I imagine that the ATMs are designed to either get an offline authorisation directly from the card or if that can't be done, possibly attempt to select a different application on the card such as Visa Plus or Mastercard Cirrus.

So therefore, the worst case is that everyone with online-auth only cards wouldn't be able to withdraw anything, and the best case is that everyone was unaffected because ATMs would try to fallback to a different application.

Olipro

JacksterD wrote: »

That's a good question, I wonder why it didn't. Perhaps there is no such thing as an actual Visa or Mastercard ATM network. It's possible that the Visa and Mastercard ATM services are just layers which allow a Visa or Mastercard to use any country's local ATM network - in the UK that would be LINK. Basically that would mean instead of every debit card having to hold applications on their chips for every single country's ATM network, they just have to know how to interact with the Visa or Mastercard ATM application which will then be able to deal with each country's proprietary ATM system.

Who knows

the ATM system is effectively universal, it asks the card for a set of specific AIDs, in the UK it tries LINK first of course (unless the bank also have their own app on the card then it'll see if it's an own-card) then it'll try whatever else it's been programmed to do (typically Visa Plus or Mastercard Cirrus and then Amex) - they all conform to the EMV spec so it knows exactly what to expect. the bank's backend software will then route it through the appropriate network for authorisation purposes etc.