Mizuho hit by 4th glitch in 2 weeks

I hope I don't wake up one day and find that all my money is gone.

Mizuho Bank suffered its fourth system glitch in two weeks Friday, dealing a serious blow to the management of one of Japan's top banks that has a history of troubling customers with technical problems.

Banks and the government share a lot in common. Abysmal customer service and decision-making and no consequences for it becuase they already have your money.

I hope I don't wake up one day and find that all my money is gone

This can not happen to me, because I dont have any.

The money I have is under my pillow and in my socks.

If memory serves, they also had a system failure on the opening day of their new name, Mizuho. I don't think the word "glitch" is appropriate anymore since it implies an aberration or anomaly. I think unpredictable technical instability would be appropriate. That's what happens when you bow and apologize only for show and don't get to the root of the matter.

Transaction glitches of this kind are not supposed to happen in a developed country. Perhaps it’s time to move my account at Mizuho to another bank.

And Japan wants to be the new “ financial centrum of the world “. Imagine how “ safe” your online transactions and accounts are.

the banking system here is medieval and archaic, not even a member of IBAN. It takes days to clear international payments and the fees are an abomination.

Banks are inefficient yet incredibly overstaffed by completely undertrained staff. They think the word “ english” is a disease. Discrimination against foreigners and foreign companies is the norm.

they force clients to online” services “or punish you. Online services in Japanese only of course. The bank books the latest example. Go online or pay a fine.

Yep...I agree with the other posters who have said it...I think it's time to find a new bank.

We had a meeting to get information about their new on-line banking in February, and the confused staff wasn't able to explain it clearly (in Japanese), copied the wrong documents amd was keeping us there for 20 minutes,so we had to drag a manager out from his hiding place, and he was able to give the information we needed in in 2 minutes.

We left feeling less than confident, and these 'glitches' add to the feeling.

Tried to make an ATM payment to an SMBC account the other day, could not find it in the drop-down menus or list of banks, not under Mitsui Sumitomo or the Japanese name (三井住友）. Requested help from staff, they could not find it either. They in turn dragged a manager out, he could not find it. Finally, a mature lady came out of the back, looked under M, looked under S, looked under み、under 三, nothing.

We checked the Japanese invoice again, payment details clearly stated SMBC and 三井住友 (xxx支店）

Then we tried the katakana spelling, it was under E!

エス・エム・ビ・シ, esu - emu - bi- shi!

The joys of J-banking.

@wanderlustT Today 11:47 am JST

LOL! good one!

I blame my hair loss on the joys of dealing with Japanese banks. From having to prepare the deposit for my house in CASH (I took it into the bank in a satchel) and them actually counting it in front of me, before then depositing into their own ATM, to the craziness of katakana/romaji when dealing with transactions (or being locked out for having a middle name). And 440 yen to make a transaction online, or limit of 100,000 yen per transfer, or the bloody security card system they force us to use..... And they seem to be getting even more paranoid, especially regarding online transfers of money within japan, even modest amounts.

It is just insane! Could write a book on dealings with Japanese banks.

For international transactions, I joined transferwise (now Wise) in 2016 and haven't looked back.

I am waiting for the equivalent of M-Pesa to come here. Then I'll be wishing the banks Sayonara.

/endless rant for good reason

With experience in the software and hardware industry, I can say we will see a lot more glitches in coming days across multiple companies. Japanese companies suddenly have came to a conclusion that hiring from India is a magic bullet. But unlike other countries who hire top quality talent across the globe including India and pay them fairly the only focus Japanese companies has, is to hire cheap talent, put them under a Japanese manager who has no idea on how to communicate internationally, and the only motivation is shouting banzai banzai banzai.

The obvious think that is missing from the story is what company made their ATMs and the overall network architecture?

Sigh.

Don't worry there is probably a huge warehouse with paper based records of every transaction with appropriate hankos.

Time for Mizuho to get out of the banking business and start an AirBnB chain if they’re going to be so incompetent.

Back in the last century, my father’s bank messed up one of his transactions. He complained. They fixed it. He took all his money out of that bank and put it in one across the street. One mistake. Not Four.

Not serious enough.

Transaction glitches of this kind are not supposed to happen in a developed country.

Well the banking system in Japan is still developing and not definitely not developed, that's one reason why

everyone keeps a personal safe and cash is still the king.

Mizuho and UFJ/MUFG have the worst IT among all Japan's banks. Trust me, been there. In Mizuho, many things still are done on paper, behind all the "IT" they have. But their IT is a joke.

And if I told you about their remote work system, you wouldn't believe me. Their IT security policy? Pretty much none. An employee can bring own USB stick, copy documents and bring it to their boss or anywhere else. Yeah, I am not kidding.

Oh, would you believe me, they don't have any testlab? The way they test their code is they test their code and then release it live.

Mizuho's IT are one of the worst people we had the chance to work with. But hey, this is internet. So take me with a pinch of salt, of course

@Robert Cikki - I can't verify what you say in the case of Mizuho, but I have experienced on a Consultant basis walking into a Japanese Banks IT department and finding no Computers on workers desks... just lots of paper shuffling - though that was a long time ago, I'm sure they've since added a Computer now... well, I don't know, since I've never been back - but hey, no Computers, no hacking risk.