“Responsibility at Coop”

On a Monday, nothing was possible at Coop without coins or small things in your pants pocket or purse. Everyone who wanted to pay by card or Twint looked old. Reason: A technical malfunction at all 955 Coop branches in the country.

Shopping carts are jammed in front of cash registers at Coop in the Letzipark shopping center in Zurich. The staff sent customers to the nearest ATM to get cash. At Coop at Winterthur ZH train station, a salesman with a “Cash only” sign warned customers before entry.

But this didn’t work on all branches. The atmosphere was tense at times. There were ugly scenes in Biel BE. Customers were upset when they learned that they could not only pay by card at the checkout. This is reported by a reader reporter.

Coop is responsible

The deterioration lasted until evening. “Late night, our experts were able to fix the problem,” Coop spokesperson Rebecca Veiga tells Blick. We waited until morning to see if the system was actually working again.

But what caused the card chaos? “It was a technical error affecting the network connection to a payment service provider,” says Veiga. Responsibility belongs to Coop. Subsidiaries such as Coop Pronto or Vitality pharmacies were not affected by the failure. You are using a different payment system.

Production adapted to failure

Issues also affected processes at Coop. “Since the technical failure occurred in the early hours of the morning, the daily production of fresh ready-made products can be coordinated,” the spokesperson said. That is, from sandwiches or ready-made salads. In addition, sales staff applied the orange discount labels to products in the afternoon – earlier than usual – driving more sales.

“Failed card payments impacted sales,” says Veiga. He doesn’t want to go into details. But he promises: “We will take the case as an opportunity and take further action to prevent such a situation in the future.”

But did rival Migros have a particularly good day on Monday and benefit from Coop’s problems? “Unfortunately, we don’t have such up-to-date statistics,” says a spokesperson.

Scope stuns the expert

“It’s special that Coop, a big player in the industry, has these kinds of issues,” says Jean-Claude Frick, 49, digital specialist at Comparis. “And above all, the whole of Switzerland was affected.”

Frick explains: All transactions that offer card payments to customers are processed through a payment service provider. For this to work smoothly, the card reader in the store must be able to verify the data stored on the card in real time. This check was no longer working at Coop.