IP: Y2K Glitch Hits Some Credit Cards

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dana Blankenhorn [mailto:dfblankn () bellsouth net]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 4:41 PM
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: Y2K Glitch Hits Some Credit Cards


Is this really the merchants' fault?

Merchant terminals come from banks, not software companies. Maybe the
terminal says "Nabanco" (that's the name of a processor) and sometimes it
has the name of a bank, like "Citibank." But merchants don't know ICVerify
from Adam's off ox.

The merchant contact is the bank. The bank gets software from a vendor (IC
Verify) in bulk and contracts with a processor (whose name may go on the
terminal), then has the device installed. The software is inside the
hardware, it's not something you can update from a store. So how is the
merchant supposed to know whether he has a Y2K problem, let alone fix it?
How can this problem be their liability?

Yet in the press releases
(http://www.cybercash.com/cybercash/company/news/releases/2000/00jan6y2kstat
ement.html) and the NY Times  story, it's all shunted off on the merchant.
Very interesting.