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How to be better prepared against an interruption to payments

  1. Keep some cash in your wallet. You can always use cash to pay, even if card payments aren’t working.
  2. Keep a week’s worth of cash at home. Each family could keep enough cash to cover their most essential spending for a week.
  3. Have your physical bank card available to use and remember your PIN code. If you have forgotten your PIN code, you can find it from your banking app if your bank offers that option. Each family should be able to use cards from at least two different banks.
  4. If you mainly pay using your mobile phone or a contactless device, use your physical bank card with the PIN code from time to time as well for payments. Then you can be certain that your card works and that you can use it to make some limited purchases from a fixed network of shops even if the usual network connections and card payments are not working.
  5. Don’t leave important payments to the last minute. If you don’t manage to make a payment at the right time, let the recipient know. The banks have back-up plans for if interbank payment systems don’t work. You should remember though that it takes time to put those back-up plans into action and payments won’t move as fast as normal.


What should I do if payments don’t work?

  • If the internet bank doesn’t work, or you can’t access it, you should contact your bank. The bank may ask you to wait for some time, contact the bank office or inform the payment recipient of the problem.
  • If card payments don’t work, pay with cash if you have some. If you have an alternative bankcard, you can try that. You can also call the bank that issued the card.
  • If there is a danger of the interruption continuing for some time, check how much cash you have and think about what you will need it for. Only spend what is really necessary.

Bear in mind that payments need the entire chain of operation to be working properly

Payment services, which are card payments and internet bank payments, only work if many other systems are working. This is in effect a chain, and if one link is broken, it may be impossible to make any payments. This could equally mean that payments are only impossible with the cards issued by one bank or through one internet bank.

The following systems need to be operating for payments to work:

  • electricity and communications
  • the bank sending the payment and the bank receiving it
  • operators of interbank payment systems
  • card payment processors, which are Nets Estonia and Swedbank in Estonia
  • international card payment organisations
  • the merchant who is selling the goods or services

Why might payment systems be interrupted?

If you can’t make a card payment in a shop or bank, it is usually because:

  1. there is a fault in the hardware or software in the payment system
  2. the development work of the system has not been properly managed, if human error has occurred for example or a new solution has not been fully tested
  3. there has been a natural disaster or incident that has caused a loss of electricity and communications or damaged buildings and payment systems, or
  4. there has been a physical or cyber attack, which could affect the systems of multiple institutions that are needed for payments to work.