Japan’s Mizuho Bank said on Thursday that all of its 5,622 automatic teller machines [ATM] and its internet transaction system were working again after system glitches caused money transfer suspension between accounts at its 440 branches. The bank said earlier that all of its ATMs throughout Japan have stopped working.
Mizuho did not immediately give a reason for the outage that disrupted $7.3 billion worth of transactions over the previous two days, but said the system was restarted as of 11:15 a.m. after being down at 9 a.m. today.
The Tokyo-based bank, Japan’s third-largest, is still investigating what caused the problem which started Monday morning, with consumers unable to conduct transactions such as cash transfers and money orders. More than 400,000 cash transfer orders placed with the bank Tuesday and Wednesday have yet to be processed.
The bank said it would hold a press conference at 1 p.m. local time about the system troubles, noting that it does not believe the current problems are being caused by Friday’s earthquake and the subsequent power cuts.
It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the first time Mizuho has experienced computer system glitches affecting its ATM network and settlement transactions computer. The bank faced a series of computer malfunctions in 2002, since its formation through the reorganization of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and the Industrial Bank of Japan into a commercial banking unit and a corporate banking institution.
Those malfunctions led to delays in 130,000 incomplete automatic utility payment settlements. At one point, the bank suffered as many as 2.5 million delayed public utility payments and more than 50,000 cases of duplicated withdrawals.
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