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Travelex says some systems restored

Travelex says that some of its customer-facing service in the UK are finally live, two and a half weeks after the company was crippled by a ransomware attack.

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Travelex says some systems restored

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

After relying on pen and paper since the cyberattack on New Year's Eve, the foreign exchange bureau is now serving customers electronically in its UK stores and in some UK retail partner locations.

However, banks - including Lloyds, Barclays and RBS - that rely on the firm still wait, as Travelex says "we continue to make progress" testing the systems that support them.

Meanwhile, Travelex sites outside the UK will begin testing next week and the firm's UK international money transfer service will be up and running by the end of the month. VAT refund services at UK airports are already back up.

The firm, which has faced criticism for the length of the outage, says "our priority is to ensure that our systems are brought back up in a controlled, secure and managed way".

While services are finally resuming, Travelex is still keeping quiet on whether it has paid the $6 million ransom being demanded by hackers from the group known as Sodinokibi or REvil, in exchange for stolen customer data.

Having faced a backlash over its communications strategy, the firm has also made a PR push, posting a video from CEO Tony D’Souza seeking to get out its message.

In the three minute statement, D’Souza says it is "the first opportunity I have had to speak to you directly," since the attack before apologising and giving a brief overview of the situation. He has also recorded a Q&A.

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Comments: (1)

A Finextra member 

Lloyd Dorfman must be spinning in his super yacht! The entire management team of Travelex (a name that will forever be linked with some form of travellers diarrhoea) should resign in shame. Does 'FX' mean 'F*ck up'?

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