It's a sign of the times that an emoji was chosen as word of the year by Oxford dictionary in 2015. Barely anyone communicates with real words anymore. Why bother with those long and stale things when you can say it all with a winky face? Hell, there's even been a novel written entirely in emojis - Emoji Dick, a much briefer version of Hermann Melville's classic.
Emojis have turned up so quickly, and exploded in popularity so much, that many old computer systems simply don't know how to handle them. Some just display them as a blank outline of a rectangle. Others, like the banking system used by this guy, just give up entirely. Bringing down an entire financial institution with an emoji? Hello, future.