Networks are wonderful until they stop working as many discovered when a recent network outage caused major disruption . No I’m not referring to TypePad’s recent problems.
On one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the Friday before Christmas, the main EFTPOS network in New Zealand collapsed due to a hardware failure. Backup systems failed and it took a couple of hours to restore service requiring shoppers/retailers to resort to manual credit card transactions.
Of course, you could still use cash but who carries that these days? From the lines seen at ATM machines not many. We are so heavily dependent on EFTPOS that many retail systems could not cope with handling the volume, reported 88 transactions/second nationwide, manually.
Technology is wonderful until it stops working…
The nightmare before Christmas
EFTPOS meltdown frustrates xmas shoppers
Retailers keep their fingers crossed EFTPOS hiccup won't be repeated Christmas Eve
