A year-2010 problem which surprised software experts is becoming so big that German banks may have to urgently replace millions of customers’ payment cards, a bank spokesman said Wednesday.
Fears are growing that the faulty microchips in the new cards may threaten the economy, with a sizeable number of people hampered when they try to withdraw cash at automated teller machines (ATMs) or pay in shops through electronic point-of-sale (EFTPOS) terminals.
Banks have been struggling since Monday to reprogram big national computer servers so that the faults do not block payments.
“If it turns out this is not so feasible, we’ll write to the affected customers and ask them to hand in the old cards and receive new ones,” said Wolfram Morales, deputy spokesman for the Eastern German Savings Bank Association on MDR Info radio.
Germany has 30 million direct-debit and credit cards with microchips, but not all are affected. ATMs have simply swallowed many of the cards after software concluded that they had expired.
Others have kept their cards, and are still able to obtain cash with them across bank counters or pay in shops by signing their names on direct-debit forms.
“We are hoping that the loss of sales this is causing will remain fairly small,” said Ulrich Binneboessel, an expert at the German Retailers’ Federation HDE.
Banks said this week that like the year-2000 problem, in which old software was not designed to recognize any date after 1999, the new glitch was caused by a software error that treats the year 2010 as if it does not exist.
The national credit panel ZKA said only one batch of the microchips was causing the problem.
The new anti-fraud technology in the chips was developed by EMVCo. That company says more than 730 million payment cards using the new standard were issued last year around the world.