When Real-Time Fails, you get a Morning in Panic Mode and What Banks Can Learn From It

Living in Finland, you get used to things just working. The expectation isn’t even that services will be fast anymore, it’s that they will be instant, 24/7, no exceptions. Whether it’s logging in with BankID, making instant payments, or ordering food that arrives before you even get hungry, we take it all for granted.

Until, of course, something doesn’t work.

Now, I’m not Finnish, but having lived here long enough, I’ve also fallen into this mindset. And this week, that expectation came back to bite me, hard. While the blame is entirely on my teenage kids (and myself), the experience serves as a perfect reminder of how digital transformation has conditioned us, and what happens when the system doesn’t meet our real-time expectations. Banks, take note, there’s a lesson here.

The Case of the Expiring Bus Passes (And the Perfectly Timed System Maintenance)

Let me paint you a picture. It’s 7:00 AM, and my household is in full-on morning chaos mode. My teenage kids are rushing to get ready for school, breakfast plates are scattered across the table, and I’m just trying to make it through my first coffee of the day.

Here in Helsinki, public transport runs like clockwork, but there’s a catch, buses don’t accept cash or card payments. You must purchase your ticket via the HSL mobile app, and the ticket is tied to a personal account, meaning no easy sharing or transferring between users. My kids, like almost every kid in Finland, have their own bank accounts, their own phones, and their own HSL apps.

And that’s when the fun started.

Both of them suddenly realized their monthly bus passes had expired overnight. And, naturally, neither had bothered to renew them or mention it to me beforehand. Cue the morning panic.

No big deal, I thought. Just open the app and renew the pass, right? Well, not quite.

OP Financial Group , where they have their accounts, was in the middle of a scheduled maintenance break.

That meant the payment was not working. No payments. No renewals. No bus tickets.

And here’s the kicker, OP had announced this maintenance well in advance. This was not an unexpected failure. But that didn’t help my kids in the moment when they were standing in the hallway, staring at their phones in disbelief, knowing they had exactly five minutes to figure out a way to get to school.

Scrambling for a Fix

At this point, I had two choices:

1. Teach them a lesson in planning ahead by letting them walk several kilometers to school in the freezing Finnish winter.

2. Step in and fix it.

As tempting as the first option was (for character-building purposes, of course), I went with the second.

I grabbed my Finnair credit card from Aktia , quickly added it as a payment method in both of their HSL apps, and renewed their bus passes. Crisis averted!

But, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple.

Now, the HSL app does allow multiple payment methods, but each must be manually registered and stored in the app, not just used as a one-off transaction. That’s a great feature in most cases, but not when you’re a parent who doesn’t want their credit card permanently stored in their kids accounts.

So after setting up my card, completing the purchase, and making sure they got out the door on time, once back home from school, I had to go into both apps and remove my card details.

A minor inconvenience? Sure. But it was also a stark reminder of just how much we rely on everything being real-time and seamless.

A Lesson in Digital Transformation

At no point during this ordeal did I stop and think:

Oh well, the bank needs downtime for system maintenance, and we should all be more patient.

No. My immediate reaction was, why is this not working right now?

And that reaction is exactly what banks and financial institutions need to understand when thinking about digital transformation.

Customers don’t check for maintenance schedules before they need a service.

Customers don’t plan for their bank’s downtime when making transactions.

Customers expect real-time, always-on services, because that’s what they’re used to.

And when things don’t work, the frustration isn’t just with the temporary disruption it’s with the entire experience.

What Banks Should Take Away From This

Digital transformation isn’t just about launching mobile apps or modernizing core systems. It’s about recognising that the consumer mindset has fundamentally changed. We don’t hope services will be available; we assume they always will be.

Here are a few key takeaways:

1. Real-Time Isn’t a Feature, It’s the Baseline

Instant payments, real-time authentication, 24/7 banking, these are no longer nice-to-haves. They are expected. If core banking systems go down at a critical moment, customer trust erodes fast.

2. Failover Systems Matter

OP’s maintenance was planned and communicated. But could there be better failover solutions? Could scheduled downtime trigger a temporary backup system that allows small transactions (like a bus pass renewal) to still go through? Could alternative payment rails step in when primary ones are offline?

3. Payments Should Be More Seamless

Open banking is already here, but it still isn’t seamless enough. The ability to instantly switch between payment methods or accounts should be standard, not a manual process requiring setup, authentication, and card removal.

4. Consumer Expectations Are Only Going to Get Higher

If banks think consumer patience will return, they’re mistaken. The next generation of banking customers will expect even less friction, faster processing, and zero downtime. This means banks need to invest not just in digital transformation, but in digital resilience.

Have We Been Spoiled by Digital Convenience?

Yes, I fully admit this was a self-inflicted crisis. The kids ignored their renewal notices, and I assumed everything would just work when we needed it. And, to be fair, everything did work in the end, just not as instantly as we’ve all come to expect.

But that’s the point.

We don’t live in an era where we hope services will work when we need them. We live in an era where we assume they will.

For banks and fintech companies, that’s both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge? Keeping up with ever-rising customer expectations. The opportunity? Delivering seamless experiences that customers don’t even have to think about.

And as for my kids? Let’s just say they’ve learned an important lesson about planning ahead.

Or at least, I hope they have!

What do you think? Are we too reliant on real-time services, or is this just the new normal? Let me know in the comments!

And have a fantastic weekend when you finally get there.