Software blocks 900,000 BRD cards

You never know, that is what they say. Announced and highly praised at the end of last week, the implementation of a new banking card application for Banca Romana pentru Dezvoltare (Romanian Development Bank) – Groupe Societe Generale (GSG), supplied by IBM made it impossible for all the BRD cardholders (and there are several hundred thousands of them, after all) to gain access to their money for five days. In other words, the implementation of the new application, initially tested on a group of ATMs and POS-es, ended in blocking almost every cash dispenser and card reader in the bank’s network, which practically made it impossible for people to withdraw cash or pay with their BRD cards. BRD-GSG is one of the leading players on the Romanian card market, as it has more than 900,000 cards issued and 371 ATMs. If looking at the total transaction value, BRD is among the top players, again. When asked for comment, BRD admitted to certain problems occurred on May 12-13 and having seriously affected the smooth running of its ATM network in some cases, adding the providers of the solution had reassured it the cash dispensers would be fully functional again as of yesterday. ZF