In Russia, there was a massive failure in the Vendista contactless payment system

In different cities of Russia, there was a malfunction in the Vendista contactless payment system, which is used by small and medium-sized businesses for contactless payments. Terminals of this system are, in particular, used in shops, cafes and restaurants, beauty salons, hotels, gas stations and parking lots.

VendGroup technical support confirmed the failure, telling the publication that the time frame for restoring the operation of the terminals is “unknown.” The failure, technical support reported, affected the processing of payments through VTB, T‑Bank, Alfa Bank, adding that “it only works through Sberbank.”

REN TV reported that due to a glitch in Vendista, among other things, contactless payment in vending machines in Moscow does not work. According to the owners of the machines, the TV channel reported, “payments from any of the popular banks do not go through.”

“Caution, news,” in turn, reported that terminal owners received different answers from banks - for example, one of them said that Vendista had been subject to a hacker attack, and VTB talked about technical work, promising to notify about the resumption of payment. At the same time, the VTB press service told RBC that on their side all systems are operating as normal.

By the evening of April 4, there was no information about the resumption of operation of Vendista terminals.

• On April 3, a large-scale failure in the operation of banking applications and services occurred in Russia. For several hours it was impossible to transfer money, withdraw cash or pay for purchases with cards. Failures were also recorded in the operation of the Fast Payment System (FPS). Experts in the field of cybersecurity suggested that the cause of the failure could be another attempt by the authorities to restrict certain services in the country - for example, Telegram and tools for bypassing blocking. Roskomnadzor sent media outlets that wrote about the connection between the failure and blocking attempts to remove this information, indicating that it was “aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation in the Russian Federation.”