Missing Eftpos mystery

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Outsourcing company EDS is still baffled by the failure of an Eftpos transaction management system which affected 70,000 transactions on Sunday afternoon.

The system was down for about 40 minutes from around 1 pm and caused long queues at many supermarkets and other shops. Some Eftpos terminals were displaying false "invalid PIN number" messages until 11 pm.

"We don't know the cause at this stage," said EDS spokesman Brian Finn. "We are speaking to our suppliers of uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) to try and determine what caused this problem."

Last month, a similar system failure, which left thousands of bank account holders unable to withdraw cash, was blamed on faulty wiring. But Mr Finn said it had not been established that power supplies were to blame for Sunday's failure.

"I don't think we can speculate as to what caused it," he said.

He was unsure exactly how long the system was down, but he said the equipment was installed in September and had failed during a testing process.

Asked whether a company that prided itself on being one of New Zealand's leading IT companies should have better control of such a vital system, he replied: "That's your take on it. Are you an IT expert?"

John Kenny, director of EDS's UPS supplier, Napier-based Vektek Industries, would not shed any light yesterday either. "You'd really have to refer to EDS."