Save your money from IT crashes – have multiple bank accounts

Just in time for Walpurgis Night, it was time for a major technology crash when countless Swedbank customers suddenly had a negative balance on their accounts. According to the bank, the error was caused by an update and led to victims not being able to pay bills or buy food. Nobody has cash at home anymore – in Sweden we have learned that it is ugly and out of date to pay cash for many years.

All that is required to put us in temporary personal bankruptcy is thus a software update. A terrible development that shows how vulnerable our digital society actually is. The accident also shows that it does not pay to actually trust their bank and put all the eggs in the same basket – people with several accounts and cards were not affected in the same way at all.

If Bank ID goes down – this happens if the service is attacked

I myself did not become temporarily poor – this time. Although my bank comparatively rarely suffers from technical problems, I have now got a real food for thought. Spreading your money and getting more means of payment seems to be the only way to escape such nightmares – cash is hard to think of. More and more stores and service facilities are ceasing to accept physical money. It’s been over a year since I myself held a banknote and I can not imagine that anything could prevent the cash death now.

The digitalisation of our personal finances has brought a number of benefits. Above all, it has become considerably more convenient to save, transfer and pay. But no bank jab at this magnitude can offset all the new crisp payment services, cashback offers and savings rates that are bubbling in the pot. There are like no excuses in the style of “technology will always crash sometimes” that can defend such things.

The banks’ Swish and Bank ID services are other examples of technology that absolutely must not interfere – but which still do just that over and over again. The police’s broken and easily manipulated passport booking system is another example that has caused major problems in the near future. Before we put our lives in the hands of such critical technology, it needs to be guaranteed one hundred percent functionality – unless reasonable alternatives are available.

So to sum up – the time when we could rely on cash if the technology failed is to some extent over. Now it also does not seem to be enough with a bank card to be able to feel safe. Great news for all the new and old banking challengers and fintech companies out there; the banks’ apparent inability to operate their IT systems should result in many new customers every time such an incident occurs. Soon I will be one of them.