Sunday April 16, 2000

Retailers pull debit-card keypads after one "melted down"

CALGARY (CP) - Safeway and other major retailers have pulled thousands of debit-card keypads from their stores over safety concerns.

The Bank of Montreal, which owns the palm-sized terminals, asked stores to stop using the units after one "melted down" at a Safeway store in Delta, B.C. last week.

"It overheated and fell off its stand and started smoking - it basically melted down," said Joe Barbera, a Bank of Montreal spokesman from Toronto.

The bank started telling retailers to remove all similar keypads Friday afternoon, when it got back test results on the faulty unit which revealed a design flaw in the battery compartment that caused it to overheat.

That prompted Safeway to remove more than 3,000 keypads from its 212 Canadian stores.

"We anticipate we'll have new pads in the stores and be able to conduct debit transactions by Tuesday," spokeswoman Toby Oswald said.

In the meantime, Oswald said, customers wanting to pay with their debit card can still do so by using a back-up voucher, which will allow Safeway to deduct the purchase amount from their account afterward.

Nationwide, there are about 11,000 of the keypads - manufactured by a defunct company called Atalla - being leased or rented from the Bank of Montreal by about 50 retailers.

http://www.southam.com/ottawacitizen/newsnow/cpfs/national/000415/n041538.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 16, 2000