Out of pocket

Monty Python sang: “I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas, I've got forty thousand French francs in my fridge.”

Sadly, for South African shoppers last week, this was most definitely not the case. Not only did shoppers not have money in their pyjamas, they had nothing in their fridges either.

In the midst of a recession, being out of pocket and hungry is not something new - hundreds of South Africans must face this dire situation every day.

But, last week, this situation played itself out rather differently. And with such consequences that Shoprite deputy MD Carel Goosen elected to make a point about it.

A quarter of a million transactions failed at the retailer's tills last week. Many customers were pulling their hair out after being alerted by SMS that money had gone out of their accounts - but the teller's point-of-sale machine showed the dreaded “transaction declined” message.

Nice. A trolley full of shopping, perishables stacked next to tins of beans and loo rolls, left stranded by the till point, all because of a system failure.

A quarter of a million transactions failed at the retailer's [Shoprite's] tills last week.

Nicola Mawson, ITWeb journalist

Things came to a head on Tuesday, and queues extended and tempers flared as transaction after transaction failed. Customers scurried between the bank and the retailer, trying to sort out the mess before the milk went sour.

No one seemed to know what the problem was, or could still be. The issue is supposed to be fixed, but Goosen says the matter continued beyond Tuesday.

The thing is, when you swipe your card at the till, the money doesn't go straight from the point-of-sale to the retailer's bank. It has to be collated, and collected, and transferred. And the company that does all of this is Bankserv.

Bankserv was set up by the banks as a sort of central clearing mechanism. It is often blamed for a variety of ills - such as when money is transferred between accounts from one bank to another. The cash disappears into a black hole for a few days. This is irritating.

But not nearly as irritating as putting your card into an ATM, and being told you have taken money out, when it is not in your hand.

Apparently, a network card failed on Bankserv's side. This caused the system to halt for a few hours on Tuesday. And it left people annoyed.

Surely there should have been a contingency plan in place so the system was not off-line for four hours?

The question this raised is what will happen when SA is flooded with 500 000 tourists next year?

That's the amount of people Fifa expects to visit the country and, if it's right, that is at least 500 000 sales of beer, 500 000 sales of McDonald's burgers, 500 000 purchases of Coca-Cola...

Bankserv says the system only went down for four hours. But, it affected the national network. Doing some simple maths shows what a catastrophic effect this can have. Shoprite turns over almost R60 billion a year.

Assuming that it's open every day of the year, and every hour in every day, that's almost R7 million an hour that goes through the retailer's tills. And that's one retailer, in the normal course of business.

That calculation is skewed, admittedly, because very few outlets are open 24 hours a day. But it's got to be pretty darn close to give an example of what SA may lose out on if the entire system came tumbling down during the World Cup.

We had better find a better solution, and quickly, because this issue goes beyond the soccer games next year. The entire economy rests on it.

Bankserv facilitates electronic transactions across the country. This is more than just swiping a card to buy a burger, or a trolley-load of shopping.

The transactions the company facilitates - over R1 trillion a year - include online payments to staff, ATM withdrawals, tax payments to the South African Revenue Service... The list is as endless as the different ways of moving money around.

What is perhaps the most worrying aspect is that the four-hour failure last week was because of a network card. How can a simple network card cause the system to go down? Didn't they have a spare one? And why did it take so long to notice?

Bankserv needs an efficient - and effective - disaster recovery plan. A system that will notice as soon as there is a problem and kick in to save the country from financial ruin.

And maybe the banks need to reconsider the entire business model of having a central clearing house. In today's wonderful technological age, there is no reason for money to wait to be cleared - and a new system may even drop bank fees.

“There is nothing quite as wonderful as money; there is nothing quite as beautiful as cash. Some people say it's folly, but I'd rather have the lolly; with money you can make a splash.” - Monty Python has that much right.