The IT Nerd

Canadian payment processor Moneris has apparently suffered an outage. The company has confirmed the outage on Twitter:

The outage is really ill timed as people are trying to get their holiday shopping done today. That and not many people carry cash any more.Though I suspect that they should as the company had another outage not that long ago. I’ll be monitoring the situation and update this story with anything I find out.

This latest outage means Moneris is really going to have explain this outage to consumers along with why consumers and retailers should trust them going forward.

More to come.

UPDATE: Moneris has posted this:

I went to Canada Computers at noon today to grab an external hard drive for a customer. But when I went to pay, their Moneris card system was down. That forced me to run to a ATM which fortunately for me was only half a block away to pay for the drive. On my way back to my car, I noticed that some retailers on the street that I was on were putting up signs that said things like “Credit/debit down. Cash Only”. That’s when I knew something was up and sure enough, I was able to confirm that Moneris which is Canada’s largest payment processor had taken a dirt nap:

Credit- and debit-processing firm Moneris confirmed it experienced a network outage on Saturday amid widespread reports of problems with customer payment terminals in several parts of Canada, including B.C., Winnipeg and Ontario.

In an email to CBC News, the company said the outage lasted about an hour-and-a-half.

“Earlier this afternoon, Moneris experienced an intermittent network outage affecting our customers’ ability to process transactions for approximately 90 minutes,” a spokesperson said in the email.

“We have resolved the network outage and returned transaction processing to normal. Merchants may experience some transaction slowness while systems catch up.”

Moneris did not say how widespread the outage was. People posting on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, reported problems in several parts of Canada, including B.C., Winnipeg and Mississauga, Ont.

Moneris called it a “network outage”. But this “network outage” also took down their corporate website. It’s online now but there are sections of it that simply do not work or return page not found errors. That makes me wonder if they got hit by a denial of service attack of some sort. I’m speculating here. But based on what little we know about their “network outage”. And this 90 minute “network outage” resulted in lost sales for small businesses across the country. I wonder if those businesses will be compensated for that as people walking around with cash isn’t a thing these days? But perhaps people should be carrying cash as Interac was taken down as part of the catastrophic Rogers outage last year, and that hurt both retailers and consumers. What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Moneris is announcing a new self-serve kiosk rental service. The Moneris Kiosk powered by UEAT is new tool for small business to increase spend and efficiency. As a rental service it provides a faster and more affordable roll-out option for restaurants. The technology integrates Moneris’ payment technology and field services and UEAT’s world-class ordering service.  

This product provides restaurants an efficient new option for having orders placed, reducing lines and wait times, increasing order accuracy and helping staff focus on getting orders out and on customer service. Some notable features include:

• Remote updates and centralized menu management to make menu changes quickly
• Improved revenue potential with automatic upsell and cross-sell features to help serve options to customers that can increase ticket size
• Simple installation, fast menu setup, and 24/7 support from Moneris
• A Good way to help staff level up their technology skills

This is just another solution from Moneris to help small businesses succeed. Last month, they announced a new partnership with Wix to help provide an all-in-one ecommerce solution.