Canadian debit network Interac is adding a backup network provider in the wake of last week's massive outage at Rogers, which left millions of customers unable to make payments.
In a statement to Reuters, the firm says: “We are adding a supplier (besides Rogers) to strengthen our existing network redundancy so Canadians can continue to rely on Interac daily.”
The Rogers outage, which lasted throughout Friday, left Canadians unable to make debit payments online and in-store.
It also knocked out the hugely popular e-transfer service, which lets the customers of 13 Canadian financial institutions send money directly from their bank accounts to the accounts of other consumers and businesses, using their email address or mobile number.
In an email to customers, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri blamed the outage on "a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction".