On November 5 last year, Luminor's card platform suffered a technical fault, which caused the bank to register some of its customers' payments twice in the system. A total of 7,539 payments were affected. As a result of the issue, some Luminor customers were unable to access the amounts in their accounts, which were marked as reserved, between November 7 and 9.

"Banks play a very important role in the financial sector. If a bank displays incorrect account balances to some of its customers and, as a result, incorrectly withholds funds totaling around €1 million for several days, then this is a very serious breach," said Financial Supervision Authority Board Member Siim Tammer.

According to the FSA, the bank breached the Payment Institutions and E-money Institutions Act, with the maximum fine for doing so set at €32,000.

According to Tammer, this type of offence not only undermines confidence in the individual bank, but also the financial system as a whole, which is why Luminor was handed the maximum fine.

Luminor Bank said, that it was aware of the FSA's decision and has been transparent in its dealings with the authorities over the issue.

The bank also announced, that it has made further investments and is aiming to improve the quality of its services in the coming months.

"While the actions we have planned to reach the targeted level of stability are longer term, we have already seen a positive impact of these actions when it comes to the performance of our digital services during the recent period," the bank said.

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