It all happened at 11:45 am this morning, April 15th, when an unspecified malfunction paralyzed a large part of the Nexi circuit. Not a hacker attack, as a company spokesperson told Il Sole 24 Ore, nor the absurd hypothesis that the system had not withstood excessive volumes of work. Simply a failure in a service of a company (which Nexi defines as a partner) which in fact paralyzed the Pos in half of Italy.
The intervention of the technicians was immediate, and Nexi reported that the problem was solved around 12.15, with the service which gradually returned to operation within a few minutes. It remains to be clarified, however, the type of failure, which apparently blocked the operation of the datacenter.
That something was wrong was understood by the reports of dozens and dozens of users on Twitter. And the confirmation had come from the downdetector site, a platform that collects and records the inefficiencies reported by citizens: many Poss did not work regularly. And the operation of cards and ATMs was blocked. It was not possible to say exactly what was happening. The specter of a hacker attack was enormous, given the ongoing geopolitical tensions. But apparently this hypothesis – which would have been the most insidious – has been averted.
In short, for about an hour, the only means of payment accepted in a large part of Italy was cash. And the irony on Twitter, also by virtue of the new fines for merchants who do not accept electronic payments, was not lacking.