During last weekend’s storm, 183 of Latvia’s 869 ATMs, or roughly one in five, experienced disruptions, including 17 of the country’s 94 critical ATMs, according to the Bank of Latvia.
The Bank of Latvia said the situation provided a real-world test of the financial sector’s preparedness to operate when electricity, communications and other infrastructure services are disrupted simultaneously.
There are 869 ATMs in Latvia, and 183 experienced varying degrees of disruption during the storm. Of the 94 ATMs designated as critical, 17 were affected.
The Bank of Latvia said banks acted in accordance with their business continuity plans, which are designed to be activated in situations of this kind. Banking services, including interbank transfers and instant payments, remained available to the public without significant disruption.
Offline card payments continued to work in shops that used generators to serve customers
even when communications were unavailable. However, offline payment infrastructure cannot operate if a retail location has no electricity.
The Bank of Latvia stressed that offline payment functionality is activated when a physical payment card is used – the card must be inserted into the payment terminal and the PIN code entered.
Offline payments are available at major retail chains, petrol stations and pharmacies. The functionality is not available across all merchant networks, but businesses interested in joining the system are being encouraged to do so.
Critical ATMs located in publicly accessible areas continued operating in regions affected by power outages. Problems were identified with ATMs located inside shopping centres that remained closed because of power cuts, making the machines inaccessible to both cash delivery services and residents.
The Bank of Latvia said
it had previously drawn the attention of the responsible authorities to ATM accessibility
and proposed possible solutions. One of these is a proposal by the head of the Crisis Management Centre to establish resilience points in selected shops where critical ATMs would also be available.
The Bank of Latvia is also urging everyone to keep some of their funds in cash or maintain an emergency reserve for use during crisis situations.
Lessons learned from last weekend’s storm will be taken into account, and work will be carried out together with the Crisis Management Centre, the Ministry of Finance, banks and other partners to improve access to services.
Critical financial services must be provided by Latvian banks whose deposits account for at least five percent of all deposits in Latvia. Four commercial banks currently meet this threshold: Swedbank, SEB banka, Citadele and Luminor Bank.
Detailed information on critical financial services is available on the Bank of Latvia’s website.
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