Devastating power cuts in New Zealand’s biggest city have closed all major banks and ATMs and may have reduced spending by as much as NZ $4.3m, according to the electronic payment processor Paymark.
Sylvia Park Mall, which turns over around NZ $1.3m a day on average, is also closed and many factories, cafés and dairies are reportedly calling for compensation – partly with the backing of senior government figures.
However, Tim Grafton, chief executive of the country’s Insurance Council, has warned that the outages may not yet have been long enough for businesses to claim against. ‘‘With business insurance some of those policies may have an excess period where the first 24 hours or 48 hours may have to be picked up by the insured,’’ he said.
Power shortages are also threatening vital healthcare services and causing transport chaos.
The blackout hit yesterday following a fire at a substation that knocked out electricity to parts of the city and suburbs. Eighteen-thousand homes and businesses in Auckland are still without power.
Whitepapers
Related reading
Central banks best suited to issue digital currencies
By Aaran Fronda A recent report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) said that central banks rather than private ... read more
Instant payments: innovations inbound for corporates
In 2020, instant payments look set to continue their current trajectory to become the biggest trend in payments. While these schemes already offer numerous benefits to corporates, leveraging innovations such as APIs and request to pay will go some way to unlocking their full potential, argues Michael Knetsch
Obstacles exist for banks to meet ECB’s instant payments goal
The cost of joining instant payment platforms will be one of many hurdles banks and payment services providers must overcome to meet ... read more
Banks must be aware of “biases” in data used to train ML models
Financial institutions need to be conscious of biases in the historical data that is being used to train machine learning (ML) models, ... read more
