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Paying with the Girocard: “We are still waiting for signals from Verifone”
Photo: Fabian Sommer / dpa
Even if it may not be as urgent on public holidays as it is on working days: In Germany, numerous terminals for payments with debit or credit cards are still out of order.
"The disruptions continue," said a spokesman for the financial service provider Concardis on Thursday afternoon.
“We are still waiting for signals from Verifone.” A spokeswoman for the payment service provider Payone made a similar statement.
Since Tuesday evening, there have been significant nationwide restrictions on the processing of transactions at H5000 card payment terminals from the manufacturer Verifone.
The US company has not yet responded to inquiries.
"We're trying to support the retailers affected as much as possible, for example by exchanging terminals where possible," said the Concardis spokesman.
According to Payone, the cause of the disruption is a certificate error within certain versions of the software provided by Verifone.
As a result, card payment is currently not an option in some retail outlets.
The discounter Aldi Nord, for example, announced on Wednesday that card payments were not possible in some branches due to the disruption.
"Our provider is still working at full speed on a solution," it said on Thursday about the current status.
»The cause of the misconduct has been identified«
The drugstore chain Rossmann and Edeka also reported problems on Wednesday.
According to their own statement, Aldi Süd, Lidl and the Rewe Group, i.e. the markets of Rewe, Penny and the Toom Baumarkt, are not affected.
The German Retail Association (HDE) had emphasized that companies depend on the smooth running of the payment processes.
The Federal Association of Electronic Cash Network Operators (BECN) pointed out that the cause of the disruption was not one of the network operators or the cards used, but only affected the specific terminal type.
»The cause of the malfunction has now been identified by the manufacturer.
The terminal manufacturer is currently working on being able to take measures to rectify the error," said the association's website.
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.
Verifone itself announced in 2018 that it had more than 350,000 H5000 terminals in use across Germany and across industries.
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.
pbe/dpa
