Post Office records 13% hike in cash withdrawals on day of global IT outage

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https://www.fstech.co.uk/fst/Post_Offic ... Outage.php

The Post Office has revealed it experienced a surge in cash withdrawals on the day of CrowdStrike's IT crash last month.

On 19 July, the global cybersecurity firm’s systems crashed, causing an IT outage which impacted thousands of organisations around the world, including banks.

The issue was linked to a security update of CrowdStrike's Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution, which impacted Microsoft’s services.

The Post Office said that cash withdrawals increased by 13 per cent to £42.8 million on the day of the outage compared with £37.9 million on the same day in 2023.

Last week the organisation’s banking director Ross Borkett said that the outage was a “big wake-up” call, with digital payments hitting a wall.

He went on to say that the crash highlighted how essential cash is as a backup when technology fails.

“It showed that we’re not ready to go fully cashless and that having access to physical currency is still a must for many,” continued Borkett.

The news comes as the Post Office publishes its latest cash figures for the month of July.

Across the month of July, Post Offices handled a record amount of cash in July with transactions totalling £3.7 billion, up £200 million on the previous high set in May.

Business cash deposits exceeded £1.2 billion in a single month for the first time, increasing by 10 per cent month-on-month, and nine per cent year-on-year.

The Post Office said that personal cash deposits also exceeded £1.5 billion in a single month for the first time up 11 per cent compared to the previous month and nearly 18 per cent in comparison to July 2023.

Speaking about the organisation's July figures on Monday, Ross Borkett, banking director at Post Office, said: “Our figures indicate that demand for cash is as strong as ever as people rely on cash to budget and businesses rely on it to survive a volatile trading environment."