No cards, thanks, we're contactless-less: UK supermarket giants hit by card payment TITSUP*
- Reference: 1611670536
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/26/payment_cards/
- Source link:
The glitches kicked off on Sunday as some stores struggled to process payments. Worryingly, the issues persisted through Monday and, as of today, those seeking to tap a card in exchange for produce might be in for a disappointment.
[1]
Hi Adam, our payment processing provider is working to correct an intermittent issue which has prevented a very small number of customer transactions from being processed. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. Regards. ^Abid — Co-op (@coopuk) [2]January 26, 2021
The affected retailers, Morrisons and the Co-Op, have remained open to keep customers topped up in the essential shopping department during the ongoing pandemic, and paying by contactless card has become a reassuring option for those reluctant to indulge in hand-to-coin exchanges.
[3]
Major issues with debit/credit card payments this afternoon at [4]@morrisons . No issues with [5]@marksandspencer . What’s the deal? Long delays in transaction speed, some requiring two or three attempts. Apparently worse with certain banks 🤔 — Caroline Coram (@CarolineCoramUK) [6]January 25, 2021
Sadly, paying by cash has become a requirement for some as self-service check-outs have been slapped with "No Contactless" signs and transaction times have stuttered to a standstill.
The issues appear to be with the payment system in use by the stores, provided by "Mission Critical Real-Time Payments" specialist, [7]ACI Worldwide . The company boasts of executing $14 trillion in payments and securities transactions per day. Except, it appears, for some those seeking to stock up on a bargain or two from Morrisons or the Co-op.
A spokesperson for ACI told The Register : "Customer relationships and the stability of our systems remain an absolute priority for ACI Worldwide. We are working closely with the IT teams at our partners to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. We apologize to shoppers for any inconvenience caused."
Neither of the retailers involved immediately responded to our queries, but the issues appear to be ongoing at present. ®
* Total Inability To Swerve User Paw-prints
Updated at 15.01GMT on 26 January
[8]
A Co-op spokesperson got in touch to with a statement following publication of this article. "All card transactions are being processed as usual and our payment process partner is investigating after we experienced an intermittent issue. We would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused during that time."
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Re: cashless society
Well, there's the slight issue that most folk need a working card to get the cash from another machine. Not everyone, but it's common.
Still, I'm sure the banks ensure that they never prevent access to their cash machines. Mmmm....
Re: cashless society
34% of people surveyed have had their cash refused at least once since March 2020.
The payment method you use is only as effective as its acceptance by others.
More importantly - why do all these huge stores, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to operate, not have a backup card processing system - even if it means swapping the card readers and costing them a few % extra? If ONLY Morrisons/Co-op went down, that meant that all the other processors worked just fine. But they just don't consider it important enough to implement a redundant system for a business-critical system. If they had, you'd never have heard a thing about it, because it would have "just worked". Maybe other places do exactly that, which is why they didn't go down.
In the toss-up between taking 98% of their customer's money, and refusing them service without cash, they opted to refuse them service.
But, sorry, cash is by no means a panacea and costs just as much as cards to handle safely, account for errors, theft, fraud, etc.
My wife went to the co-op today and they said that it was sorted. She paid with card with no problems.
Morrisons contactless worked today for me.
Best to always carry some cash
If this incident had affected withdrawal of cash as well then this would have been an armageddon sampler.
IIRC Waitrose had a similar problem a while back. My local Waitrose is quite a distance from the nearest bank cashpoint and there were a lot of disgruntled customers.
Re: Best to always carry some cash
Disgruntled customers at Waitrose? That will never do, dear oh dear.
Our co-op in deepest Hampshire was also offline around 6pm on Monday night. As I and a few others were Q'ing at the checkout they announced on the bing-bong-box that it was cash only. From conversations it sounded like the card machines had been up and down all day.
I didn't help the queue as all I had was a Bank of Scotland £20 note, which the two teenage girls behind the checkouts had never seen before. Cue being looked at like an alien while they pondered what it was I had handed them. You'd think I would be used to it after 25 years of living here, but it still winds me up.
TITSUP?
Total Inability to Service Users Payments maybe more appropriate?
Or perhaps Untouched Payments...
My MasterCard doesn't have contactless at all. If this only affected contactless and you could still push card in for Chip/PIN was there really an issue?
If this affected all card type transactions then the "Contactless-less" is a bit meaningless.
Indeed it is unclear.
Maybe the RNG gods just went bad for coop and morrions and it was time for everybody to use a chip and pin refresh operation (or some glitch made it so).
Contactless does not work forever and the appropriate response to it failing is not to try again, but to use a chip/pin payment.
From my point of view if it's no cards then it's no go. It occured to my coop 6 odd months ago (equipment failure), but they had the sense to put up a sign on the door to deter you away rather than waste your time (and the cash point still worked). But really, come on can they not fall back on offline transactions? No, becuase the processors passed the fraud reponsibilioty back onto the shop rather than the processor so they won;t take the risk. I used to love those imprint machines too!
Bloody Co-Op
With most people using contactless these days for obvious reasons it's reassuring to know that the ATM outside my local one charges £1.20 for cash withdrawals and that someone at least is making a profit from their "convenience" store.
Re: Bloody Co-Op
I don't know about theirs, but a lot of these cash machines are not run by the owner / banks. If that's the case, who should pay to install and run them?
"No contactless"....
...doesn't necessarily mean Cash only. If you look closely at your contactless card, you'll find a chip in one end and a black stripe on the reverse. These allow you to use a card reader to pay by either swiping or plugging the thing in.
Sheesh. People have such short memories these days...
Seriously though. Contactless payment involves an additional set of exchanges with the payment provider over and above chip 'n pin or swipe 'n sig. Losing the ability to process contactless often doesn't affect the other options.
Mission Critical Real-Time Payments
Any British company putting that into their marketing spiel knows full well that they are only doing it because they can not deliver.
cashless society
Cards can be convenient. Some people like mobile payments. Cash however always just works.
Cashless society? No thank you.