There are currently reports emerging across the UK and Europe of retailers experiencing disruption with taking card payments from customers. VISA seems to be particularly affected, but there are reports that Mastercard is also impacted.
More details will be provided as they become available:
Updates
- One card services provider, Paymentsense, has issued the following statement: “There is currently a disruption of service taking payment from VISA. It is affecting all payment providers across the UK and Ireland. We are in touch with VISA to help provide a fix to this [issue].”
- Mastercard UK has stated via Twitter that it is not aware of any current problems with its systems. This has been supported by a Halifax Bank statement, which reads as follows: "We are aware of an industry wide issue effecting Visa payments which is under investigation. ATM and Mastercard transactions are not impacted. We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."
- CityPay has published the following statement: "Visa has advised us that they are having issues with its authorisation service since 14:36pm which may cause intermittent authorisation call failures & time outs. Visa are investigating this issue and hopes to resolve it as soon as possible."
- The BBC states that Visa card payments are currently failing elsewhere in Europe as well as the UK.
- Wireless Terninal Solutions statement: "There is currently a UK wide outage on card terminals that is effecting customers paying with Visa and Mastercard. Wireless Terminal Solutions have been informed that AMEX may be working. Unfortunately this is completely out of our hands."
- Visa has now confirmed that the payments disruption is across Europe, stating that "We are currently experiencing a service disruption which is preventing some Visa transactions in Europe from being processed. We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation."
Final update
Visa issued the following statement on Saturday 2nd June:
“Visa has resolved a technical issue which occurred yesterday in Europe and prevented some consumers from using Visa for payments. The issue was the result of a hardware failure within one of our European systems and is not associated with any unauthorised access or cyberattack.
“Visa Europe’s payment system is now operating at full capacity, and Visa account holders can now use Visa for any of their purchases and at ATMs, as they normally would.
“Our goal is to ensure all Visa payments work reliably 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We fell well short of this goal today and we apologise to all of our partners and Visa account holders for any inconvenience this may have caused,” Al Kelly - Chief Executive Officer, Visa Inc.
