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Valley safe from ATM outages, say banks Rogue Valley ATM card users, who deal with major banks such as U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual, needn't worry about irksome computer crashes like the one that hit New York's Citibank earlier this week. Citibank's 2,000 nationwide ATMs, its debit-card system and online-banking functions were knocked out for almost five hours on Tuesday evening. The system crashed again Wednesday morning. About 2 million U.S. households have Citibank bank accounts, although there are no Citibank branches in the Rogue Valley area. A bank spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that software was the problem. Jan Estep, executive vice president for merchant and payment systems at U.S. Bancorp, said Thursday that rigorous testing and redundancy are keys to avoiding ATM failures. "If there is a change in one of our computer systems, it always goes through rigorous testing before it goes into production. We also have redundant systems in St. Paul (Minn.), Cincinnati and Portland that provide back-up and multiple sets of phone lines." U.S. Bank has 6,760 ATMs around the country and provides processing for another 7,000 ATMs owned by other companies nationwide. Wells Fargo upgraded its ATM equipment in 1998 after buying First Interstate Bank. "First Interstate's ATMs were like dinosaurs in comparison," said Tom Unger, Wells Fargo vice president and Oregon regional manager for public relations. "We upgraded all ATMs and have been doing further upgrades. In some locations we have touch-screening with full-motion video." Wells Fargo has more than 6,000 ATMs in its system. "ATMs are expensive," Unger said. "It sounds like Citibank was not able to upgrade its system. It bears repeating to almost every company in business world that you have to stay ahead of curve." Washington Mutual has 1,700 ATMs. Even if one of its ATMs is off-line, said Mary Kelley of WAMUs Northwest Regional public relations office, the machines can still give out limited amounts of cash. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.