About 30m chip and pin cards – a quarter of those in circulation in Germany – are thought to have been affected by the programming failure, which meant that microchips in cards could not recognise the year change to 2010.
A French card manufacturer, Gemalto, admitted today it was to blame for the failure, which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify. Gemalto, whose shares dropped by 2.6%, said it was attempting a software update, but might have to replace the cards. Gemalto-manufactured cards in other countries were not affected.
German credit cards hit by Y2K10 bug
Posted on Thursday, January 07 2010 @ 19:02 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Guardian reports millions of German debit and credit card holders are unable to withdraw money or make payments in shops due to a software bug related to the year change to 2010.