Nets, a major payment processor in Denmark, has attributed the widespread disruption of card payments last Saturday to a technical error within its systems. The company issued a press release on Thursday detailing the cause of the breakdown.

The disruption stemmed from a “rare component failure” within the underlying infrastructure, which is managed by a “global partner,” according to Nets. While a backup system was designed to activate upon detection of such an error, it failed to engage as intended.

Allan Bonke, country manager at Nets, stated in the press release that measures are being implemented to prevent similar system errors from causing such widespread consequences in the future.

The system outage had significant repercussions, preventing numerous drivers from using card payments at the Storebælt bridge and disrupting transactions at the Musik i Lejet music festival and Grøn Koncert.

Nets has maintained that the breakdown was not the result of external attacks.

The systems were offline for approximately three hours before being successfully restored. Since then, Nets has been investigating the root cause of the error.

Following the incident, the Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs requested an explanation from Nets, via the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanstilsynet), regarding the cause of the breakdown and the company’s contingency plans for such events.

Nets, which was acquired by the Italian payment group Nexi in 2020, holds a significant market share, handling up to 80 percent of card payment acquisitions in Denmark.