Sberbank cards stopped working

UPD: At 20:30 it worked. Under the tackle causes of failure.
UPD2: A new press release about the restoration of work has been posted on the Sberbank website.
UPD3: German Gref explained the reasons for the failure of Sberbank cards.
UPD4: 07/13/2012 Received a message from Sberbank Mobile Bank (number 900) with the following content:

Dear customer! 07/07/2012 from 5:10 to 8:20 for technical reasons, the use of bank cards was limited. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for understanding. Your Sberbank

And so, today is Friday. Everything would be fine, but from about 18:00 17:10 all the cards issued by Sberbank were no longer serviced. It does not matter abroad or in Russia, through the terminal or Sberbank Online - nothing works (no transactions can be carried out). Even the payment from the card does not make.

Refuse to work cards themselves. Sberbank ATMs work fine with other cards. Any action - rejection of the bank. At first I thought something had happened to the map, but as the Twitter search showed, I was not the only one who ran into such a problem.
')
They posted a press release on the official website of Sberbank, they are aware of the problem:

Sberbank of Russia reports a technical failure
Due to a technical failure, Sberbank cards are not serviced. IT department of Sberbank is taking all possible measures to resolve the problem as soon as possible. Sberbank apologizes to its customers for the inconvenience.

There is not a word about the approximate terms of solving the problem.


What can I say? All with friday! The picture is quite a topic, though it's not about ATMs.


UPD: 20:30 After 5 minutes after the post was published, the payments were made - reports were sent to Sberbank Online, the money was withdrawn, the Mobile Bank notified. Seem to have risen.

UPD2: Debriefing. A new press release on the restoration of work was posted on the Sberbank website:

July 6, 2012, Moscow - Sberbank of Russia announces the restoration of bank card services.

The servicing of Sberbank's bank cards was not available from 17:10 Moscow time due to the failure of the processing database on the ORACLE platform. The transfer of the system to the backup complex did not yield the expected results. In this regard, it was decided to start the Recovery procedure of the database. Due to the large amount of data, this procedure takes a long time, however, it guarantees the recovery of absolutely all client data and transactions. The system was completely restored at 20:10 Moscow time.

Sberbank brings its sincere apologies to customers for the inconvenience.

UPD3: German Gref explained the reasons for the failure of Sberbank cards on July 6 and spoke about the measures taken to avoid similar problems in the future. In particular, on the limits on offline card transactions.
UPD4: 07/13/2012 Received a message from Sberbank Mobile Bank (number 900) with the following content:

Dear customer! 07/07/2012 from 5:10 to 8:20 for technical reasons, the use of bank cards was limited. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for understanding. Your Sberbank