At the end of the day on Sunday, a massive banking failure blocked payment and withdrawal transactions for thousands of customers of Crédit Mutuel, CIC, Crédit Agricole, and Société Générale. How can this situation be explained?
Massive failure paralyzes banking system
In our country—as in many others—the banking sector is responsible for managing payment and cash withdrawal transactions. This central position largely explains why its players view the significant development of cryptocurrencies with suspicion.
In the United States, this is currently taking the form of a veritable competitive war, in an attempt to minimize the rise of stablecoins, which has been greatly accelerated by the adoption of the GENIUS Act regulatory framework. But it is still necessary to be able to offer an impeccable service.
In fact, a major banking failure affected France yesterday in the late afternoon, on the last day of the school holidays. This was a peak period during which payments and withdrawals became impossible for customers of Crédit Mutuel, CIC, Crédit Agricole, and Société Générale.
An internal malfunction prevented members and customers of 16 Crédit Mutuel federations from making payments and withdrawals by bank card between 5:20 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. today. The internal cause of the incident has been identified and resolved thanks to the efforts of our IT teams.
Crédit Mutuel
The result: thousands of reports were made involving motorists stuck at highway toll booths and/or unable to fill up at gas stations, as well as customers unable to pay for their purchases or restaurant bills.
Was an update to blame?
Specialists quickly stepped in to explain how the reasons for this malfunction could be multiple and difficult to identify, due to the complexity of the banking system and its interconnections with numerous service providers.
According to the latest news, a number of clues point to an update that was due to be carried out on the payment network of Worldline, a French company in difficulty following the collapse of its share price after the publication of an investigation last June accusing it of turning a blind eye to fraud.
According to available information, work on the company’s payment network was scheduled to take place overnight from Sunday to Monday. The problem? These updates, carried out at the weekend to avoid any potential disruption, are likely to cause disruption precisely because they were delayed until the weekend.
No official statement has been released on the subject by Worldline. At the same time, an ongoing assessment suggests that the malfunctions recorded during this period could also involve other payment structures such as AliPay, American Express, Apple Pay, BBVA, and PayPal (non-exhaustive list). This is a matter to be followed closely.
