News

National network troubles impact Japan's ATMs

January 26, 2004

TOKYO - Japan's banks were hit on Jan. 26 by failures in the new national ATM network.

NTT Data Corp, Japan's largest domestic system integrator, said all financial institutions with ATMs linked to the nationwide system were affected, according to a Reutersreport.

Systems at about 130 institutions -- including the nation's top seven banking groups but excluding insurers and securities firms -- were integrated under the network developed by NTT Data.

The failures were fixed around 4 p.m. but the cause of the problem has not been identified, an NTT Data spokesman said.

The spokesman said this was the first failure since the country's ATM networks were integrated into one system that went into operation on Jan. 5.

The problem seemed to be restricted to foreign transactions, according to Reuters. Most financial institutions reported that their own cardholders could perform transactions at their ATMs.

Japanese banks had experienced several failures at their own computer systems as acquisition activity heated up over the past few years and merging banks tried to link their technical systems.