TOKYO -- The joke was on customers of Japan's new Mizuho Bank on April 1, although few if any of them were laughing.
The retail banking arm of Mizuho Financial Group, which made its debut on April 1, was hampered by a systems bug that partially brought down its ATM network, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun.
Mizuho Bank was born of the merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo and Fuji banks and the Industrial Bank of Japan, and has about 7,000 ATMs nationwide, including 3,400 machines of former Fuji Bank and 3,500 of Dai-Ichi Kangyo.
ATMs were back online by the morning of April 2. The glitch was blamed on a computer problem linking the systems of Fuji Bank and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank.
Mizuho group banks had stopped all their ATMs for 58 hours over the weekend to smooth the systems transition prior to April 1, according to the Asahi Shimbun report. But worries persisted because of a similar ATM problem on March 25 that affected customers using Dai-Ichi Kangyo ATMs.
"Mizuho has been slow. It should have been conducting tests half a year ago,' a central bank official said in early March, voicing concern over the pace of the group's systems integration.
Mizuho carried out its first comprehensive test in December. Mizuho denied in late January there would be problems.
One official at a major bank told the Asahi Shimbun that the integration of three banking systems into two was "complicated in all respects.' However, he said, "Mizuho was not properly prepared.'
