Payments system meltdown at Asda forces shoppers to revert to cash

Wal-Mart-owned supermarket chain claims payments problem resolved - just before closing time

A nationwide payments system crash at supermarket chain Asda forced shoppers to revert to cash and to queue for up to an hour on Sunday.

Queues also formed at cash machines outside branches of Wal-Mart-owned Asda as shoppers were forced to withdraw money to pay for goods rather than use debit or credit cards. Some stores resorted to old-style paper-based card transaction machines in a bid to keep queues moving, albeit slowly.

Asda, the UK's third largest supermarket chain with a market share of 15.6 per cent, according to Kantar, claimed that the IT glitch was fixed this afternoon, but only just before closing time at 4pm.

The company was accused by shoppers of having no back-up plan in the event of such a failure, and many simply dumped their goods and shopped elsewhere instead.

While the chaos was unfolding at Asda stores around the country, in a statement a spokesman said: "We are in the process of resolving a technical issue with our card payment system in stores. We're continuing to process payments as quickly as we can but apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this has caused."

Naturally, Twitter was replete with tales from Asda stores from across the country.

Computing has asked Asda to explain what went wrong and how it resolved the problems and will update the story when they respond.

Earlier this year, Asda was accused of ignoring a critical security flaw on its website for two years - until the security consultant who identified it went public.