Though an earlier outage is now resolved, losing card payments on one of the busiest shopping days of the year is going to have an impact for retailers, the CEO of the Downtown Victoria Business Association says.
Moneris, a joint venture between Royal Bank and BMO Bank of Montreal, announced its initial outages affecting debit and credit payments around 12:30 p.m. PT, then by 1:30 p.m. PT the situation was resolved.
Jeff Bray says the inability to pay with card means retailers run the risk of the customer walking away and not coming back.
“If somebody can’t complete a transaction and walks out of the store, the risk is that they don’t come back to complete that transaction when the technology is up and running and that they will either go somewhere else or maybe even go online,” Bray said.
“This is a really make-or-break part of the year for most retailers, especially smaller, independent businesses, so any kind of interruption to the transactions is concerning.”
When the system came back online, Moneris said retailers may continue to experience some slowness as the system catches up.
“Moneris experienced a network outage affecting customers ability to process transactions. The issue has been identified and resolved. Merchants will continue to experience some slowness while systems catch-up but everything should return to normal shortly and teams are monitoring,” the company said in a tweet.
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Moneris experienced a network outage affecting customers ability to process transactions. The issue has been identified and resolved. Merchants will continue to experience some slowness while systems catch-up but everything should return to normal shortly and teams are monitoring
— Moneris (@Moneris) December 22, 2023
BC Ferries was one of the companies that has announced it was affected by the outages.
Moneris also recently experienced outages in September 2023, with debit and credit payments going down for 90 minutes.
Moneris says it supports more than 325,000 merchant locations across Canada.
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-With files from The Canadian Press
Laura Brougham
