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Payment Paralysis in Poland: Massive Outage of PayTel Terminals
Published: 00:00 09/29/2025
Incydenty
Nationwide Chaos: PayTel Payment Terminals Outage
On Monday, around 11:00 AM, news of a massive failure of payment terminals from one of the country's largest operators, PayTel, swept across Poland. The problem affected thousands of shops, service points, and restaurants, preventing customers from making cashless payments.
The Scale of the Problem and the Operator's Reaction
Reports of issues came in from all over the country. Both large retail chains and small, local businesses reported a state of paralysis. Social media erupted – customers and vendors shared their frustration, and hashtags related to the outage quickly gained traction. It was as if someone had suddenly turned off the 21st century and told everyone to dig for cash in their pockets.
PayTel confirmed the outage, stating that its "engineers are working intensively to resolve the issue." The cause of the malfunction has not yet been officially disclosed, but there is speculation that it could be a network infrastructure error or a software problem at the clearing center.
Service Restoration and Future Lessons
After several hours of intensive work, around 2:30 PM, the operator announced that terminal functionality was being gradually restored. Nevertheless, this incident has once again shown how heavily the modern economy relies on digital payment systems and how severe the consequences of their unavailability can be.
We can only hope that the companies responsible for this critical infrastructure will learn their lesson, because next time, cash-strapped customers might not be so understanding.
This is already the second such outage in Poland in a short time – earlier, eService terminals also went down. Attacks on critical infrastructure, such as the cyberattack on European airports, show that similar disruptions can also be the result of hacker activity.
Source: Business Insider Polska
Aleksander
About the Author
Aleksander Zębrowski
Chief Technology Officer at SecurHub.pl
PhD candidate in neuroscience. Psychologist and IT expert specializing in cybersecurity.
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