The recent outage of the Canadian network Rogers caused internet issues for consumers and companies. However, it also crippled Canadian bank ATMs, point-of-sale solutions, and internet banking. Such a central point of failure needs to be eliminated from the equation, but that is easier said than done.
Rogers Outage Caused Many Issues
When the most prominent internet provider in the country suffers from an outage, all hell will break loose. Canadian customers and corporations were not too happy with the recent Rogers incident. While it cut off the internet for several hours in several parts of Canada, the big problem is much more serve.
The Rogers outage also affected Interac, a Canadian e-transfer service provider. The company enables payment routes for transactions between banks and other institutions and companies. It is the backbone of various central Canadian banks, including Tangerine, HSBC Bank Canada, and National Bank.
Due to the outage, Interac is unable to provide the services its customers rely on. More specifically, INTERAC Debit was unavailable in stores and online, and INTERAC eTransfer suffered from spotty availability. Things tend to escalate quickly when consumers and companies cannot access their money or process transactions, especially due to measures beyond their control.
Moreover, the Rogers outage affected various other banks, including ATMs becoming inaccessible, point-of-sale devices becoming fancy ornaments, and internet banking yielding many errors and little action. Although services are back to normal now, the overall outage sends a strong signal to the banking industry. Ensuring history doesn’t repeat itself is not as straightforward.