Payments to Egg Delayed by Database Bugs
NatWest customers who happen to also own an Egg credit card have unable to make payments via the Egg website for over two months due to a database glitch that yet to be fixed.
Egg has noted that fault will be fixed in the next few days. The problems started because the Egg website would not recognise Visa debit cards from NatWest as a legal form of payment due to problems with the card number.
Every card has what?s called a ?Bank Identification? number which are used by websites to search through databases and find the details of a specific bank ? if no details can be found using the BIN then the card is labelled as not recognised and the payment is declined. BIN numbers are changed regularly.
The problem is, the Egg website is finding legitimate BIN as invalid because the system they use through Experian Payments hasn?t been updated with the new BIN numbers. Experian have passed the blame onto NatWest saying that it was up to the bank to get in touch with them and supply updates for the system.
A Spokesperson from Egg said:
?As soon as we were made aware of this issue we have been working with the third-party who provided the data to rectify this problem as quickly as possible. We expect it to be resolved by early next week.?
NatWest, who are changing their main debit cards from Maestro to Visa for all of their 13 million customers, stated that they had notified Egg about the problem weeks ago and where waiting for the company to act on their concerns and update the system.
NatWest customers can continue to pay their Egg bills through the online banking system while the problem is resolved.