Important Notice: Debit Card Issues

Our members may be impacted by an issue causing their debit cards to be declined at some Point of Sale (POS) terminals and Automated Fuel Dispensers (Gas Pumps).  This is not a credit union debit card issue.

This problem is impacting financial institutions that have issued new debit cards supporting the Interac Mandated changes of Combined Data Authentication (CDA).  Member transactions with these CDA cards will be declined when the member is required to use the PIN (Contactless impacted when spend limit exceeded or cumulative spend exceeded) at some POS terminals.  However, the member will be able to process transactions using Contactless (no PIN and insert) and the CDA debit cards continue to work at all ATMs.

For VantageOne members this means any MemberCards that we ordered through the banking system or were auto-renewed in 2019. MemberCards issued in branch are not affected.

This issue was first brought forward (December 17th) by one credit union and, at the time, it appeared to be an isolated situation. CCUA staff escalated the problem to Interac to investigate.

Everlink provided to Interac a sample of test cards to assist with the investigation.
Interac concluded that this was not card related as all CDA cards issued by credit unions had been certified using Interac’s third-party agent.

On December 31st CCUA staff identified that several more credit unions have been impacted by this issue and the problem has continued to spread.

Interac has now confirmed that this is a hardware terminal issue at some merchant locations.   The vendor, Verifone, has been able to replicate the error and identify the bug causing the declines.  We are anticipating further updates from Interac on the resolution to this issue and will update credit unions when received.

This is not only impacting credit unions, as several banks have identified the same issue, and it also appears to impact credit cards at the same terminals.

If you experience an issue with your debit card you could Split your transaction in two to allow for Contactless transactions.

We recommend to have cash on hand as a back up until this issue is resolved.

Interac has now issued a customer alert on its newsroom. https://newsroom.interac.ca/intermittent-interac-debit-chip-and-pin-card-purchase-declines/