TOKYO, Oct 11 — The system glitch suffered by Japan's payments clearing network showed no signs of recovery, with 11 banks affected and millions of transactions disrupted, the operator said on Wednesday.
There is a possibility that bank transfers may be delayed as the system problem which started on Tuesday morning continued, said Japanese Banks' Payment Clearing Network, or Zengin System, in an online statement, Xinhua reported.
Noting that the services might not be restored by the end of the day, the operator added that it would try to make transfers possible by other means.
Also on Wednesday, The Shoko Chukin Bank, a government-affiliated financial institution dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises, announced a suspension of bank transfers at branch counters and ATMs across the country, following its halt of transactions via payment machines and the Internet on Tuesday.
The number of glitch-affected transactions reached 1.4 million as of Tuesday night, and the figure is expected to exceed 3 million if the cases where the banks were unable to receive bank transfers were calculated, according to local media outlets.
Zengin System, to which most Japanese banks are connected and processes an average of 6.5 million transactions and over 12 trillion yen (about US$81 billion) a day, said it was unclear what went wrong, and that it was the first time that bank customers have been impacted by a system problem since the network was launched in 1973, according to national news agency Kyodo.
— Bernama-Xinhua
