Visa Outage Across Europe Causes Payment Chaos For Millions

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Visa went gone down across Europe on Friday, causing chaos for customers as retailers were left unable to take payments.

People heading out as the weekend began were being advised to take cash with them as supermarkets, restaurants, and bars across the UK and continent were affected.

Late Friday night Visa announced it was back up and operating “close to normal levels”.

Our goal is to ensure all Visa cards work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Due to a systems failure, we fell well short of this today. We apologise to all our partners & especially to Visa cardholders. We’re currently operating at close to normal levels. https://t.co/JGlzs8anbI

— Visa UK (@VisaUK) June 1, 2018

Users took to social media to complain, and it is understood the Bank of England was aware of the issue and in touch with the company.

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. We will keep you updated.

— Visa UK (@VisaUK) June 1, 2018

Alex Neill, Which? managing director of home products and services, said: “Clearly this issue will be a huge inconvenience to customers and it must be resolved urgently.

“Visa and the banks need to ensure no-one is left out of pocket due to this outage.

“We strongly advise people to keep any evidence of extra expenses they’ve incurred in order to claim them back.”

There was anecdotal evidence of some people taking advantage of the situation...

At petrol station when #VISA went down. Bloke b4 me had no cash so they asked him to return+pay tomorrow. Said he would. Asked him 4 his phone 4 insurance. He said no. Asked for his name. He said “dave”. Didn’t take his plate, surname or address. Pretty sure he’s not going back

— Paul Stubbs (@InDerby) June 1, 2018

#Visa thought my life had reached a new low when my debit card was declined in @Primark 😂Turns out it was part of the Europe-wide issue. Phew! Payday was only yesterday

— Carolyn (@HisGrumpyMonkey) June 1, 2018

Fuck me. Anyone who believes Western civilisation is anything other than teetering on the knife-edge of total collapse and pandemonium clearly hasn’t been stood at the tills of a busy Aldi when the entire #Visa system goes down.

— Sam Gore (@samgorecomedian) June 1, 2018

Visa said in a statement: “Earlier today, Visa had a system failure that impacted customers across Europe.

“Our goal is to ensure all Visa cards 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 most especially, to Visa cardholders.

“Visa cardholders can now use their Visa cards as we are currently operating at close to normal levels.

“The issue was the result of a hardware failure. We have no reason to believe this was associated with any unauthorised access or malicious event.”

Didn't think I'd need to make this sign today #visa #visaoutage pic.twitter.com/M33obGCN0b

— Matthew Daniel Nelson (@mdnphotovideo) June 1, 2018

The Visa network is relied upon worldwide to process payments.

In 2014 it processed 100 billion transactions with a total volume of just over £5 billion.

Urgent: VISA outage announcement affecting all merchants nationwide. pic.twitter.com/BMuRLIs5cY

— Paymentsense (@Paymentsense) June 1, 2018

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Check back for the fullest version. Follow HuffPost UK on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.

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