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Its pretty dark here now as I type this in Brighton at 2pm because its raining. How dark does it get in India during the monsoon season - don't want to be denied funds just because its gone dark - and what about after at night-time if the ATM hasn't stored up enough power - what if it cuts out just as its registered the debit and its about to dispense funds or return your card?

I forgot to mention that of course none of the Acquirers asked me for the Name & Address of the offending Merchant - you might have thought their first reaction might have been "is it one of ours"?

Not for the first time I got impacted by an Natwest outage that also impacted customers with RBS.

Trying to pay some Bills on Fri afternoon before end of month, was waiting 30 minutes just to login, another 30 minutes waiting to see my Balance, never did manage to instigate any transactions.

Yet there's never an apology on the website, or a sorry e-mail.

RBS Home page proudly states today : "Digital Banking : over 95% of our customers would recommend our service to a friend" - try asking that question again today!

There again don't bother, a Company who gives out Bonuses that represent 130% of its Profits isn't exactly interested in hard facts?

In the USA some of the Consumer Goods stores (eg Sports Authority) used to ask for a ZIP Code; I used to blatantly tell them the ZIP Code of my Hotel as shown on the room key - they were happy to take it, they just needed to complete a mandatory field.

Contrary to your original question, I know that many USA Merchants progressed to getting a list from the Card Associations of which BINs represented US-issued Cards, so they could refer to them in the POS, and not bother asking foreigners for their ZIP. I've worked in a professional capacity with K-Mart, Walgreens & Wal-Mart on such a list.

Then if I'm buying any controlled drugs like Advil Cold Remedies containing pseudoephedrine (controlled because it is used to make methamphetamine aka crystal meth), I've have to provide my Passport (which doesn't contain my Address), and then provide my UK Drivers License which does (but doesn't show my photo), and then there's the consternation trying to fit a 7-character alpha-numeric UK PostCode into a 5 numeric ZIP?

Don't know if this still happens, but there used to be a 'fashion' amongst US residents to NOT actually sign their cards, but to write in the signature strip "ask to see Photo ID", thus prompting the sales clerk to ask for Drivers Licence with Photo - an interesting precaution so long as the sales clerk can be bothered to flip the card over? 

I warned my own staff a few years ago about relying on BankWizard.

It doesn't seem to have a formal arrangement with any of the Card Associations for keeping up to date with BINs. One of their employees told me they compiled their list anecdotally by inspecting the Cards in their own Wallets and Handbags.

That would tie up with RBS Natwest saying they done what was expected of them with the Visa Acquirers - and Experian/BankWizard is not an Acquirer.

I watched that Video - thank you to Jackie for bothering to record it, and thank you to Paul for drawing it to our attention. It's an excellent piece and I would recommend anyone to take the less than 10 minutes to listen to it and take it to heart - but of course BofA probably won't.

If we become 100% dependent upon Internet Banking, then we need a reliable process.

I have a Switch Debit Card that has to be inserted into a Xiring Card Reader every time I introduce a new Payee. When my Card Reader broke, it took 2 weeks for a replacement to arrive - during which time at least I could fall back on Cheques. I now have a spare Card Reader as backup.

My Card is looking a little worse for wear; if it breaks (or is lost), then I could wait a week for a Replacement Card; where is the Business Continuity then?

It's one thing to take 14-30 days to pay a Supplier - its something else if I'm paying a 40-person Payroll - in any given month of course I've got a new Starter, or someone has changed their Bank details - so I need a Debit Card + Card Reader Back-up service - and Cheques could serve that purpose.

I've not been able to find any report of precisely what time the power failure happened, but from the time of the earliest press reports, the service seems to have been out for 4-5 hours?

If it was a simple power failure, there shouldn't have been any customer impact, since batteries & back-up generators should have cut in automatically?

Only if there was a network problem, and they lost connectivity to the datacentre, should there have been this sort of disruption.

I presume they'll be looking hard at their Business Continuity Plan this morning?

What is particularly disturbing in this case is the length of time, from 1st November 2001 to 30th April, 2009, that the crimes were allegedly underway - almost 8 years – as he is described as a 27 year old now, it means he started out when he was 19 years – so what access rights did he enjoy under what level of supervision?

Well I suppose it'll be nice to revert back to 1975-85 when I was with Williams & Glyn. Somehow it'll not seem so bad - thinking that if I was with RBS I'm still paying for Fred Goodwin's pension.