On Thursday, UK shoppers were hit by a payments outage, preventing them from making online and card payments using Visa and Mastercard.
In retailing giants such as Sainsburys, ASDA, and M&S, there were hundreds of complaints of frustrated shoppers unable to buy their groceries, according to records on DownDetector.
A Sainsburys spokesperson said to Sky News: “This was due to an issue with our third-party payment provider. We’re accepting all payments as usual and continue to monitor the situation. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Consumers reported issues making payments in retailers across central London on Thursday morning at 8:00 am, but reports reduced later on during the day.
A Visa spokesperson commented on the situation: “We are aware that a merchant payment provider reported issues this morning that impacted some cardholders. It has been reported that this issue is now resolved. Visa’s systems continue to operate normally.”
Mastercard stated: “We are aware of some payment transaction issues at select merchants in the UK and are working with our partners to gather more information. There is no current indication that these issues are related to our network.”
The outage has since been attributed to a service disruption at Worldline. A Mastercard spokesperson later added: “We can confirm that the Mastercard network has been operating normally and that yesterday’s issues were not related to our systems.”
Andrew Martin, CEO and Founder of SMEB, commented on the faults of relying fully on cashless payments: “Today’s payment outages shine a fresh light on the continued importance of cash and why the march to a cashless society is a bad idea. We’re seeing a growing number of businesses across the UK label themselves as ‘cashless’ venues and it makes you wonder how they must cope when technical glitches like this happen, and the frustration it must cause their customers.”
