Retailers want explanation of Eftpos failure

Retailers want to know why technicians were making major changes to the Eftpos system during retail hours yesterday.

Thousands of customers were stranded when the system that manages Eftpos (electronic funds transfer - point of sale) transactions crashed while a back-up system was being installed.

Retailers could only watch helplessly as customers without cash abandoned their purchases at the check-out counters.

Electronic Transaction Services (ETSL) spokesman Darryl Roots said a power failure occurred at 1 pm when service provider EDS was installing a system to automatically swap to emergency power in outages.

"The unfortunate thing was the work that was being done was on the power system to essentially stop this sort of thing happening again. You've got to actually be able to put the thing in."

He estimated 70,000 transactions were affected during the 40-minute outage and he would be asking why the work was done during retail hours.

Mr Roots said the system had a very good record and would be improved when the switch-over system was complete.

A similar problem occurred a month ago while work was being done on the new system.

He said transactions were either declined or accepted so customers would not experience any bank statement problems.

Retail Merchant Association spokesman Barry Hellberg said he would speak to EDS and ETSL to ensure the problem did not recur.

"I would expect the retail industry would want some public explanation of why the problem occurred," he said.

- NZPA