In different cities of Russia, a malfunction occurred in the Vendista contactless payment system, which is used by small and medium-sized businesses for contactless payments. Stations of this system are used, in particular, in shops, cafes, restaurants, beauty salons, hotels, gas stations and parking lots.
VendGroup technical support confirmed the failure, telling the publication that the time frame for getting the stations back up and running is “unknown.” Technical support reported that the failure affected the processing of payments through VTB, T‑Bank and Alfa Bank, adding that it “works only through Sberbank.”
REN TV reported that due to a glitch in Vendista, among other things, contactless payment does not work in vending machines in Moscow. According to the machine owners, the TV channel reported, “Payments from any of the popular banks do not go through.”
“Be careful, news.” In turn, I mentionedterminal owners received different answers from banks – for example, one of them said that Vendista was subjected to a hacking attack, and VTB talked about the technical work, promising notification of the resumption of payment. Meanwhile, the press service of VTB told RBC that all systems on their part are working as usual.
By the evening of April 4, there was no information about the resumption of operation of the Vendista stations.
On April 3, there was a widespread failure in the operation of banking applications and services in Russia. For several hours it was impossible to transfer money, withdraw cash or pay for purchases with cards. Malfunctions in the operation of the Fast Propulsion System (FPS) were also recorded. Experts in the field of cybersecurity suggested that the reason for the failure may be another attempt by the authorities to restrict certain services in the country – for example, Telegram and unblocking tools. Roskomnadzor sent media outlets that wrote about the relationship between failure and blocking attempts to remove this information, noting that it “aims to destabilize the social and political situation in the Russian Federation.”