At midnight on New Years Day, as clocks advanced from 2009 to 2010, some of them hiccupped. One such was the internal clock within the Bank of Queensland’s computer software, running its EFTPOS terminals in many retail shops. In its confusion, the software changed the date not to 2010 but to 2016, thereby rendering all credit and debit cards with earlier expiry dates invalid, and throwing chaos into the holiday shopping spree across Australia.

But the glitch, it seems, was not limited to these shores. A similar set of circumstances happened in Germany, as well, where more than 25 million credit and debit cards, from a variety of banks, ceased functioning properly on the stroke of midnight as the new date stamp did not compute.

Not all German plastic is affected. Banks scrambling to make repairs include two of the largest, Postbank and Commerzbank, as well as the association of savings banks, DSGV, where almost half of the 45 million eurocheque debit cards and 8 million credit cards issued no longer function—but the other half do.

The unlucky cardholders affected cannot use ATM machines or make payments with their cards, both within Germany and internationally.

To make the German glitch even more confusing, not all ATM and EFTPOS machines are affected—only some of them. And while over 25,000 machines have already been repaired, the final clean-up won’t be until Monday, 11 January, according to the statement from the DSGV representative.

Hopefully Bank of Queensland will beat that record.

Source: heraldsun.com.au