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You may be having problems with your Visa card.
Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIf you wanted to use your Visa card to pay for something in the UK and Europe on Friday, you may have had to use cash instead.
Visa announced Friday that it experienced a "service disruption" that prevented transactions from going through.
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.
— VisaNewsEurope (@VisaNewsEurope) June 1, 2018
As a result, The Guardian reports that millions of people have been unable to pay at shops, gas stations and train stations across the UK and Europe, to the point that lines reportedly built up at gas stations and some supermarket customers were forced to leave their items at the register. The Financial Times reports that many UK ATMs ran out out of money when customers were forced to use cash.
A Visa spokesperson tells CNET the issue was due to a hardware failure. "We have no reason to believe this was associated with any unauthorized access or malicious event," the company added.
Visa says you should be able to use your card now. At around 2:20 p.m. PT, the company sent CNET the following 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 apologize 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.
As of 8:32 p.m. PT, Visa added that its European systems were fully functional. "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," the company wrote.
Here are some of the tweets from banks and retailers earlier in the day:
Hi David. We believe there may have recently been issues with Visa’s payments processing. From what we understand there are still intermittent issues but services are slowly recovering. ^KD
— HSBC UK (@HSBC_UK) June 1, 2018
We’re aware some customers are experiencing Visa debit card issues, we’re sorry if you’ve been affected. This is impacting multiple banks across Europe. We’ll update when we know more. You can still make cash withdrawals from ATM's.
— Barclays UK Help (@BarclaysUKHelp) June 1, 2018
We are aware some customers are experiencing Visa debit card issues. This is impacting multiple banks across Europe. We will update when we know more. Cash withdrawals can be made at any BOI ATM.
— Bank of Ireland (@talktoBOI) June 1, 2018
We are aware of an industry wide issue affecting Visa payments which is under investigation. ATM and Mastercard transactions are not impacted. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
— Bank of Scotland (@AskBankOfScot) June 1, 2018
There is currently a disruption of service in taking payments from VISA. It is affecting all shops/merchants across the UK and Ireland.
We can still accept MasterCard, American Express or good old cash! We'll keep you updated when it's fixed and apologise for any inconvenience.
— Wrapped! (@wrappedshop) June 1, 2018
We have been advised by our card processing partner that Visa card transactions throughout the UK are experiencing disruption. If you are trying to purchase tickets, please use an alternative payment method. We will keep you updated as the situation develops #visa.
— Paultons Theme Park (@paultonspark) June 1, 2018
Sat in a bar in Vienna, can’t pay the bill because visa is down everywhere... and then an advert for visa debit comes on. Oh the irony #visa debit pic.twitter.com/GdpErlroZL
— jamie (@donttakethepeas) June 1, 2018
Read more at ZDNet: Visa transactions hit by service outage
First published June 1, 9:36 a.m. PT.
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