Visa Europe outage: Visa claims systems back up and running following hardware failure

Afternoon of retail disruption caused by hardware failure, claims Visa

The Visa network has returned to normal this evening after being down for much of the day. Visa claims that a sudden hardware failure caused its payments systems to go down this afternoon, causing disruption across the continent.

The failure prevented credit and debit card users from paying by card for purchases. Supermarkets across the UK went cash-only in response, with the outage lasting into the evening, although Visa debit card users could still withdraw cash from their current accounts via ATMs.

The card problems also caused long tailbacks on the Severn Bridge toll crossing as motorists were unable to pay, while service stations struggled, too, when customers couldn't pay after filling up with fuel.

The outage also affected some retailers' Mastercard and American Express payments because some merchant acquirers route their transactions via the Visa network. However, contactless transactions were reportedly more likely to go through than transactions involving PINs.

A spokesperson for Visa apologised for the disruption: "Visa is currently experiencing a service disruption. This incident 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."

While problems started to emerge around lunchtime, they apparently started to ease in early evening, with Paymentsense, a company that runs card services for SMEs, suggesting that transactions were starting to go through.

Around 9pm, Visa suggested that the outage had been fixed and that its payments network ought to be back to normal.

The Consumers' Association Which?, meanwhile, has advised users to make a note of transactions - failed or otherwise - and make sure that they are not double- or tripled-charged as a result.