Card payments were disrupted across Estonia

There were temporary disruptions to card payments in Estonia during Saturday lunchtime.
Rainer Olt, head of Eesti Pank's payment systems department, told ERR there was a brief interruption in the service for accepting card payments at noon.
"The impact was actually quite large – it was estimated that half of the outlets were affected and card payments at those outlets were disrupted. But it was a short interruption, so the problem was resolved in about an hour and card payments should be working fine at this time," he said.
Olt said this could have been caused by a network outage, which has happened before. Nets Estonia, the Estonian card payment system, was not affected, but the card payment acceptance service of one bank in particular was.
"With this in mind, it is indeed important to emphasize that in such situations people could use or try to use more than one bank card in their wallet, maybe it works. And in fact, it's even more important to have some cash in your wallet so that you can make your purchases, buy a ticket, pay in line, or pay at a cafe at a critical moment when it might be difficult to go to an ATM and get cash. Of course, there is always a chance that ATMs will work during such outages, and you can usually still get cash from them," Olt said.
Olt said an investigation into the cause of the disruption is ongoing.
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Editor: Merili Nael, Kristina Kersa