Online payments

Online payments firm Realex has apologised to customers after it suffered a major break in its service that left its 7,000 customers without payment facilities for several hours last week.

The company, which was set up by Colm Lyon in 2000, described the break as the worst incident in its history.

The problems kicked off last Friday shortly before 9am. Realex had updated customers by 9.30am, confirming there had been “significant intermittent issues” in processing payments and that its incident management team was working to resolve the problem.

It later emerged that the problem had been caused by a hardware failure, with Realex’s core storage network and its backup both failing. The company had the service back online shortly after 3pm the same day.

Chief operating officer Gary Conroy said the company was in contact with its customers to apologise for the problems, and said it had never experienced something like this before.

He said it was unacceptable, with clients relying on the company to provide a critical process.

Work is now under way to conduct a thorough review of the incident and the systems in place.

“Everyone here is devastated and very concerned that we restore confidence,” Mr Conroy added.

Among Realex’s customers are Aer Lingus, Vodafone Ireland and Aviva Health, along with thousands of smaller firms, both Irish and international.