‘Leap year glitch’ shuts some New Zealand fuel pumps

By Lucy Craymer

WELLINGTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) – A number of New Zealand petrol pumps stopped working on Thursday due to a “leap year glitch” in payment software, fuel stations and the payment service provider said.

Allied Fuel, Gull, Z Energy and BP all confirmed some self-service fuel pumps they operate around New Zealand were not working due to issues with the payment system used.

John Scott, chief executive of Invenco Group, which provides the payment software solution, said the system had stopped working due to a “leap year glitch”.

This was now fixed and just needed to be rolled out to affected fuel pumps around the country, Scott said.

Once every four years, there is an extra day in February creating what is known as a leap year. New Zealand is one of the first countries in the world to experience a new day and so experiences a leap day first.

Scott said this was just an issue with the New Zealand code, and while Invenco was unsure how it had happened, it would investigate the glitch over the coming days.