PC World reports that smart card vendor Gemalto said on Wednesday that it is distributing a software fix to German banks for a programming glitch that caused millions of German payment cards to stop working. It may, however, be several weeks before the software is fully deployed.
The programming problem, discovered last week, was related to the end-of-year date change to 2010. Up to 20 million ATM cards, known as Girocards or EC cards in Germany, and 3.5 million credit cards have been affected, the German Savings Banks and Giro Association says.
DSGV on Jan. 7 approved Gemalto's software fix, which will in part be implemented as people put their cards into ATMs and point-of-sale devices, although Calvet said he could not release further details.
The software fix avoided the need to replace payment cards. Gemalto estimated that the payment card fiasco could cost the company between €6 million to €10 million (U.S. $8.7 million to U.S. $14.5 million).
