The Y2K bug struck a decade late last week, with businesses across the country losing thousands in potential sales due to a computer glitch that caused EFTPOS machines to reject customers’ cards as the calendar turned over to 2010.
The Bank of Queensland has confirmed the problem, but says it is continuing to work on the issue with manual fixes currently in place and an investigation underway to find the root of the bug.
Apparently the bank’s EFTPOS machines had their internal computer clocks move forward six years on New Year’s Day, causing the machines to reject any cards with an expiry date stamped before 2016.
As the current debit and credit cards issued to customers are not valid past 2016, all of these cards were rejected by the machines.
Thousands of customers have been forced to move from EFTPOS to cash, causing many to abandon purchasing some items altogether. It is still unknown whether ATMs have been affected by the glitch, which is similar to the dreaded Y2K bug that was expected to take over computer systems in the year 2000.
”There is an issue with the time and date stamp on Bank of Queensland EFTPOS terminals and we are working with our service providers, Keycorp and First Data, to address this issue as a priority,” a BoQ spokesperson said in a statement. “We have a manual work-around in place, and we are still investigating the cause.”
The spokesperson also said it doesn’t know how many of the bank’s 8,000 EFTPOS terminals have been affected by the glitch, but the bank understands it is a “large percentage”.
However, a fix is currently in place that will allow businesses to manually enter customers’ card details, thereby enabling electronic transactions to be processed. It is still unconfirmed whether business clients will be compensated for lost sales.
Keycorp, provider of EFTPOS software, refused to comment on the situation.
The EFTPOS glitch comes after a bad year for the bank. Early last year investors in collapsed financial group Storm Financial accused BoQ of breaching its duty of care, allegeding it had engaged in misleading conduct.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
