No card payment possible: nationwide disruption at Netto, Edeka and Co.

Due to a nationwide disruption, there have been problems processing card payments since Tuesday morning. As the consumer portal Chip reports, discounters and retailers are affected throughout Germany. Problems with the numbers are also expected on Wednesday.

According to information from the consumer portal, branches of Netto Marken-Discount, Edeka and individual Rewe branches are particularly affected. But there are also isolated problems with card payments at Aldi Süd, Aldi Nord, Rossmann and dm. Credit cards are also affected by the disruption.

Card payment disrupted: Cause probably certificate error
The problem first appeared on Tuesday morning. The retail chain Konsum from Dresden wrote on Facebook “Attention, an important note for you! Due to a Germany-wide disruption, card payment is currently not possible in our stores.”

It is unclear how long the disruption will last. Apparently, only certain card readers are affected, which read the payment data but cannot forward it. “The terminals cannot connect to the host. Work is already being done on troubleshooting,” said the software provider Huth to the consumer portal.

“Like other network operators, we are currently experiencing significant nationwide restrictions on the processing of transactions with H5000 card payment terminals from the manufacturer Verifone,” said the payment service provider Payone on Wednesday in Frankfurt. According to the first findings, the cause is a certificate error within certain versions of the software provided by the US manufacturer.

Reports of problems with providers such as Visa, Sparkasse or Commerzbank are also piling up on the alle disturbances.de platform. The reports come from numerous places in Germany.

Disturbance with card payment: Software must probably be reloaded
The Federal Association of German Banks, representing the German banking industry, made it clear that the terminals in question are completely unavailable for all payment types, but that the corresponding type only accounts for a small proportion of all devices used in Germany. “Network operators and technical service providers are working intensively on troubleshooting,” it said.

The financial service provider Concardis also confirmed the problem with the terminal type. However, a company spokesman made it clear that affected dealers should not restart the devices themselves. The devices should also remain connected to the power supply and network. This is the only way the manufacturer can solve the problem. Payone assumes that new software will have to be installed to fix the error.

Payone and Concardis stated that they were in contact with Verifone and were working on solving the problem. Verifone has not commented so far.

Providers of alternative payment methods – such as QR codes – see themselves strengthened by the incident. As the consulting company ZIIB announced, QR systems work without any terminal hardware. Therefore, you can avoid loss of sales in this way