New click day, new catastrophe: the IO app is not working and millions of users cannot enable their payment cards to get the cashback, which starts tomorrow at midnight.
Unfortunately, what many feared has happened: the computer system that holds the strings of the IO app, and therefore of the State's Christmas Cashback, has gone haywire due to the overload resulting from the flood of users who are trying to enable payment cards.
As we've explained in a special guide, in fact, it's not enough to have already entered your payment cards to automatically get the cashback but you have to take an extra step: enter the app and enable all the cards you want to use to get the Christmas cashback up to 150 euros. All this, however, not before updating the app to the latest version that was released just yesterday. But the cashback starts tomorrow and it's logical, and was widely predictable, that everyone would try to enable the cards today sending IO's computer system into a tailspin. Here's what's happening.
IO App: the most common problems
The first problem of IO in these hours, the most common one, is the impossibility to open the Wallet section where credit, debit, ATM cards and other payment methods accepted by IO have been registered. As a result, it is impossible to perform the card enabling operation.
And this is the best case scenario, because there is worse. Many users, after making the mandatory update of the app, have seen their previously registered cards disappear with the old version of the app. Quindi devono adesso (se ci riescono) inserirle nuovamente per poi trovarsi di fronte al solito problema della sezione Portafoglio.
Altri utenti non riescono neppure ad aggiornare l’app, ma leggono solo il messaggio “Il cashback sta arrivando! A breve potrai attivare il cashback e inserire il tuo IBAN per il rimborso: attendi il prossimo aggiornamento di IO!“. Ma l’aggiornamento non arriva. Su molte app, infine, la sezione Cashback è sparita del tutto.
Problemi app IO: cosa dice pagoPA Spa
L’app IO è gestita da pagoPA Spa che, però, al momento non comunica nulla in merito ai problemi riscontrati dagli utenti. Anzi, per la precisione ha emesso un comunicato stampa questa mattina presto affermando che i problemi erano tutti superati: “Da domani, martedì 8 dicembre 2020, il servizio entra nel vivo. Nell’ultimo periodo, con SIA S.p.A. e Microsoft, abbiamo intensificato le attività di potenziamento e test di tutte le componenti tecnologiche. This, combined with the interest in the initiative, has led to temporary slowdowns in the IO app, which we have gradually resolved to ensure a satisfactory experience for citizens, who are at the heart of our corporate mission".
According to pagoPA, the slowdowns depend on the more than 1,900 accesses per second that the servers have to manage. A number that's likely much higher now given that total IO downloads have surpassed 6.4 million in total, across Android and iOS apps. This would be basically the same problems with the IO app as last week.
IO app problems: what to do
It's clear that when faced with problems like this there's not much you can do: without updating the app you can't enable cards, but after updating the cards disappear and you can't enter them anymore.
Considering that, in the meantime, the three payment cards through which it is possible to get cashback without SPID have not yet activated the feature (probably because they have to rely on the same IO servers) the user has only to wait and try again from time to time until he can enter and enable his payment methods.