updates
Cash registers cause problems at times
Many dm branches affected by software glitch
06/14/2022 1:04 p.m
At the end of May, discounters and supermarkets across Germany reported problems with card payments. The error seemed to be fixed after a few days, but now the incident at the drugstore chain dm seems to be repeating itself. In many cities, customers are sometimes standing in front of closed branches.
Several branches of the Karlsruhe drugstore chain dm have reported problems with their checkout systems again at times due to a software glitch. Accordingly, markets in several German cities had to be closed in the morning. In the early afternoon, the company announced that the error had been found and fixed. The company did not say how many markets nationwide were affected, even when asked. It also remained unclear whether the problems were limited to card payments alone or whether the cash registers did not work as a whole, as the “Bild” newspaper reported.
The error was noticed quickly because it first appeared in markets that opened at 7 a.m., the company reported. IT specialists quickly fixed the problem. Most cash registers are functional again, said dm boss Christoph Werner.
Customers from Berlin, Freiburg, Leipzig and Rendsburg in Schleswig-Holstein had previously reported problems on Twitter and other platforms. In other branches in the same cities, however, operations are said to have gone smoothly. “Focus Online” reported that the affected branches could not connect to the Internet.
As early as the end of May, it was not possible to pay by card in large parts of the retail trade throughout Germany. At Aldi Nord, dm, Edeka and Netto, among others, customers were temporarily only able to pay for their purchases in cash. The cause was a software error in a widely used card payment device that had to be replaced.
Officially, the cause of the problem in May is not yet known. The German trade association announced that it would work on the effects of the H5000 terminal type, which is widespread in Germany. The Bundesbank, the financial supervisory authority BaFin, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and partner central banks in the Eurosystem also announced that they wanted to investigate the disruption.