Postbank customers will have to be prepared for massive restrictions again this coming weekend. Starting next Friday afternoon, the Deutsche Bank-owned bank will conduct the third and penultimate wave of customer migration to a joint Postbank and Deutsche Bank platform. From 12 p.m. on Friday (31 March) until 17 a.m. on Monday (3 April), the 9 million Postbank customers will not be able to carry out any banking transactions, either via the mobile application on their smartphones, on their home computers or by telephone. Mobile and telephone banking will not be possible until 14 p.m. on Monday, according to a spokesman for Deutsche Bank.

Archibald Preuschat

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In terms of the number of customers, the upcoming wave of migration is the largest. 5 million Postbank customers will be migrated to the joint platform next weekend. At the first wave Easter 2022 there were 4 million, at New Year's Eve 2 million. On the product side, the upcoming migration wave would focus on further current accounts, overnight and time deposits, savings products and credit cards, explains the spokesman.

Credit cards in focus

Especially with credit cards, there will predictably be major restrictions. Although they can be used to pay in stores, sales made will not be visible to some customers for about 10 days. Who wants to pay with his Postbank credit card orders on the Internet, could get problems, warned the spokesman. Cash withdrawals with Postbank cards are also not possible at Postbank ATMs. It would be even more unfortunate to lose your credit card at the weekend. "The application for a credit card will only be possible in a few days," said the spokesman.

In addition to migrating customer data to the new database, 2.7 million will also be brought to the cloud. Especially the latter has led to massive problems after the last wave of migration at New Year. F.A.Z. readers complained in abundance that they could not use online banking at all or only to a limited extent. "Since some customers have multiple products on different databases, these issues are expected to be resolved by the end of June when the migration is complete." However, Deutsche Bank and its partner Google have drawn the lessons from the problems at the beginning of the year, the spokesman said.

Bank sees itself better equipped

Overall, however, Postbank sees itself better equipped for the coming wave of migration. "We have learned our lessons," the spokesman said. This has ensured that the institute's servers do not collapse under the rush of customers, as they did in January. Postbank also wants to ensure better accessibility for its customers after F.A.Z. readers reported in January that the hotline had been unavailable for hours or even days and that e-mails had only been answered with a standard answer and not with a problem solution. According to the spokesperson, the number of call center employees has increased almost fivefold. The number of employees answering emails has doubled, as has the social media team responding to customer issues.

The program, dubbed "Unity", aims to consolidate Postbank's 12 million customers onto a common platform with Deutsche Bank's 7 million German customers. The institute expects this to save 300 million euros annually, which should take effect from 2025.