14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP support will be retired in just 16 days, but 95 percent of the world’s ATMs are still running this particular OS version, according to third-party statistics.
The Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) knows that this is quite a critical moment for all banks in the country, so it has released a warning for all local financial institutions, saying that they can either move from Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8 or face sanctions.
Forcing banks to step away from Windows XP by preparing fines isn’t quite the right way to convince them to upgrade, but it could be a solution to keeping customers protected, especially because security experts are predicting an avalanche of attacks after end of support.
The problem for banks is that upgrading from XP to any other operating system is very expensive, so all cash machines also need hardware improvements.
On the other hand, the upgraded ATMs would benefit from new features and better security, which means that customers would get better services across the country. It remains to be seen however how many banks can deal with this upgrade process with only 16 days left on the clock and with everyone asking them to migrate to a newer OS as soon as possible.