Financial sector calls for mandatory backup power at critical ATMs
Following a recent storm that knocked out part of Latvia's ATM network, the Finance Industry Association is urging a legal requirement for building owners to provide backup power to critical ATMs. Its chairman says talks with state authorities have been ongoing for nearly two years without a full solution.
Uldis Cērps, chairman of the Finance Industry Association, told the LETA news agency that owners of premises housing so-called critical ATMs should be legally required to guarantee these machines a permanent alternative power supply, ensuring they keep working during crisis situations when the main electricity grid fails.
Cērps said the association has been discussing this requirement with responsible state authorities for almost two years, but the issue still has not been fully resolved.
94 critical ATMs
Latvia currently has 94 so-called critical ATMs, a number set to rise to 106 soon. Banks are already required to keep these machines running and stocked with cash during crises, but the question of who ensures their electricity supply remains inadequately regulated. Cērps explained that property owners currently have no sufficiently defined obligation to provide backup power — an ATM full of cash is useless without electricity. Possible solutions mentioned include alternative power connections, generators or other backup energy sources.
Offline payments already in place
Cērps noted that Latvia already has infrastructure allowing certain stores to accept Latvian-issued cards for food, medicine and fuel purchases even when internet or mobile networks are down, provided the store itself has electricity. He said the overall foundation for ensuring access to financial services during crises is solid, but much of the system still relies on voluntary cooperation from retailers, and expanding the circle of participating merchants would require strengthening state authorities' powers as well.
Regarding last weekend's storm, the Bank of Latvia reported that 183 of the country's 869 ATMs experienced outages, including 17 of the 94 critical ATMs — a real-world test of the financial sector's readiness to operate during simultaneous power, communications or other infrastructure disruptions.
