One equipment failure knocked 128 Japanese banks offline at once

by

Translated from Japanese

Mizuho’s massive 2021 outage looked like this in its first week, too. ATMs stopped working. Cards were swallowed. No one called it a crisis.

1/ Shizuoka: All 9 shinkin banks in Japan’s regional credit cooperative system stopped some ATM and teller services within a single afternoon. ATMs at Hamamatsu Iwata Shinkin Bank stopped working. Even by mid-afternoon, none of the 9 could say when they would resume.

2/ Tokai: All 25 shinkin banks in Aichi, Gifu, and Mie went down. This includes Okazaki Shinkin Bank, the largest in the three prefectures. The bank’s teller services, ATMs, app, and online banking all stopped.

3/ Kansai + Tokushima: 27 shinkin banks in Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Shiga, Wakayama, and Tokushima could no longer accept deposits or dispense cash. Osaka Shinkin Bank posted paper notices telling customers that its system was down.

4/ Payments: PayPay began emergency maintenance affecting all 128. Customers could no longer add money to PayPay from these accounts. They also could not link new accounts. The freeze spread from bank teller services to mobile payments.

5/ 29 prefectures: From Hokuriku to Kyushu, 128 shinkin banks simultaneously stopped deposits, withdrawals, and transfers at teller windows, ATMs, and online. Each bank told customers to make transfers at other banks.

Now let’s zoom out.

236 shinkin banks, about nine-tenths of Japan’s shinkin banks, operate on a single shared system. The system has two centers, one in the east and one in the west. The part serving western Japan failed on Friday afternoon. The operator says the cause was equipment failure, not a cyberattack. One failure. 128 financial institutions frozen.

Mizuho’s 2021 outage did not stop after a single Sunday. It stretched into the second week. No one is calling this a crisis yet. But Japan’s banks have now stopped services twice in 15 days.

On October 22, a serious PHP software vulnerability hit most of Japan’s banks, and Mitsubishi UFJ temporarily suspended some online services. Even 2 hours after Friday’s freeze, the operator still could not say when services would be restored.

The next freeze will come without warning. Follow me now. Otherwise, you will find out the same way these customers did: standing in front of an ATM that will not work.

AI-summary

A major system outage has frozen ATMs, deposits, withdrawals, and transfers at 128 shinkin banks (credit unions) across western Japan.

Key Details

• Cause: Broken communications equipment at the West Japan Center of a shared banking system run by 236 shinkin banks.
• Affected Services: ATMs, deposits, withdrawals, and money transfers (furikomi) are offline or severely disrupted.
• Impacted Institutions: Includes regional credit unions such as Osaka City Shinkin Bank, Seto Shinkin Bank, Okazaki Shinkin Bank, and institutions across regions like Hiroshima.
• Status: No confirmed full restoration timeline yet.
For updates and information regarding your specific institution, check official announcements directly from the affected banks or via the Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
If you use a specific shinkin bank in western Japan, let me know which one and I can check if more localized restoration details are available.

128 BANKS ACROSS WESTERN JAPAN JUST WENT DARK AT THE SAME TIME.

Shinkin banks from Tokai west, all the way to Kyushu. A system failure on a Friday afternoon.

ATMs: OFF
Teller counters at 3,430 branches: OFF
Internet banking: OFF
Transfers to other banks: OFF

Fully unavailable. The money is still in the accounts. Customers can’t get it out.

27 banks hit in Kansai and Tokushima alone
ALL 8 in Fukuoka prefecture
Seto Shinkin cards blocked even at convenience-store ATMs
paper “SUSPENDED” signs stuck on ATMs in Osaka

Not a war. Not a bank run. No sign of a hack.

The suspected cause: broken communications equipment at the West Japan Center of ONE shared system that 236 shinkin banks run on.

One center failed. 128 of those 236 banks froze with it.

As of Friday evening in Japan, still NO time given for a fix.

3 days ago it was Paraguay. 3 million customers locked out of Ueno Bank, $380 million of the state pension fund stuck inside.

Now it’s 128 banks in Japan.

The financial lockdown is getting BIGGER.

Paraguay got no warning. Japan got no warning. Follow me today, or you’ll wish you had when your own bank’s screen goes dark.

h/t Fenris

Got a news tip or correction? Let us know

If you got something out of this, please chip in to keep this site running, or subscribe to go ad-free.

1 view