The Challenges of Digital Payments

Digital payments can feel inevitable, sweeping all before them. A range of recent news items suggest this isn’t true.

The risk of outages

Japan’s payment clearing network experienced severe problems, affecting 11 banks and 1.4 million transactions on one day in October. The Japanese Bankers Association said this was the first system problem that had affected customers since the network was launched, in 1973. The problem was detected after a system equipment update during the long weekend.

Such problems happen relatively frequently. In August 2023, Bank of Ireland customers were unable to transact online, using their mobile banking app, or to access cash from the bank’s ATMs.

This month in the UK, contactless card payments stopped working at Tesco, the nation’s largest supermarket. On the same day, two other supermarkets, Sainsbury and Aldi, experienced payment problems. Again in the UK, Barclays’ mobile and banking services went down for two hours in October due to technical issues.