A major computer outage has affected many Crédit Mutuel customers.

"An internal malfunction prevented bank card payments and withdrawals from members and customers of 16 Crédit Mutuel federations between 5:20 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. today," Crédit Mutuel announced on the X social network on Saturday.

"The internal cause of the incident was quickly identified and resolved thanks to the mobilization of our IT teams," the bank continued, offering its "sincere apologies to the members, customers and merchants affected."

A spokesperson for the group told AFP that it was a bug in the acceptance of payments from Crédit Mutuel, CIC and Monabanq cardholders, a bug that "is not unprecedented" in the banking world, even if it is the first time that it has affected the group's 14 million customers.

He could not yet specify exactly how many customers had been affected.

On social media, many customers have complained about not being able to pay for their purchases two days before the start of the school year.

According to the Downdetector website, which tracks communications outages on online platforms, more than 5,200 reports had been made about the Crédit Mutuel outage and nearly 3,000 for CIC, as of Saturday around 8:30 p.m.