Impossible, for several hours this week, to pay or withdraw money for millions of French people.
This is one of the fears when making a purchase by credit card: “Payment refused”. Millions of French people saw this message appear on a payment terminal on Tuesday March 5, 2024. Everyone’s first instinct: check the funds in their account and, above all, the authorized ceilings. But even without these being reached, it is impossible to pay the bill in any store, or even to withdraw money from an ATM. A terminal bug? From your bank card? Whether you are a merchant or a customer, there is no need to complain to your bank.
This is none other than BNP Paribas. Its 7 million customers were unable to use their payment method for several hours, regardless of their card and the state of their finances. The bank provided explanations for the impossibility of paying. A hiccup occurred between 10:15 a.m. and 1 p.m. due to “a technical incident”, which “interrupted payment and withdrawal services by bank card.” No further details on the source of the problem were provided by the bank.
BNP customers were not the only ones affected by the outage. Those of its subsidiary Hello Bank were also affected by the problem. An additional 800,000 people were therefore unable to pay for their purchases for several hours, even if “not all operations are affected, it’s random”, the group told TF1 Info.
Furthermore, access to digital banking services has been disrupted. Although it was possible to log in to your customer area, not all features were accessible, particularly that concerning your bank card(s). Finally, everything returned to normal at the beginning of the afternoon and all services are functional again: you can reuse your bank card normally.
Last October, a similar incident took place. This did not affect a particular bank but made payment to several brands impossible. The bug came from a technical problem affecting a “monetics solutions provider”, in other words a company that supplies cash registers, payment terminals and other ordering terminals to stores.
