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Lloyds Bank payments glitch frustrates merchants

C'mon, you POS... >:(

Lloyds Bank has admitted that unspecified technical problems affected the operation of its Cardnet payment system on Tuesday. The UK bank denied suggestions that it had suffered a cyber attack.

The Register learnt of a potential issue after a reader got in touch to say that many chip-and-PIN terminals were not working for Spire/Hypercom point-of-sale machines because of what support staff had told him was a "cyber attack".

In response to follow-up questions asking for more specifics, the tipster offered: "The terminals won't contact acquirer blaming network error. Cardnet's Spire support only said 'cyber attack'. No specifics."

One affected party took to Twitter to complain about an issue with Lloyds Bank Cardnet but there was no evidence of widespread problems and two independent UK payment systems security experts hadn't picked up on any problems.

In response to queries from El Reg, Lloyds Bank confirmed a glitch in its systems but downplayed the significance.

We are aware that a small number of merchant terminals experienced issues yesterday as a result of a technical problem which has since been resolved. We have been providing guidance to merchants on how to resolve the issues with impacted terminals and are very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Lloyds Bank, which is in the process of outsourcing data centre management to IBM, declined to answer follow-up questions on the number of merchants affected or the nature of the problem. ®

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