Visa apologized to its European customers for a system failure outage that left many of its clientele unable to make purchases for hours upon end. Whereas developed economies are trying to move towards a ‘cashless’ civilization, yesterday’s issues showed just how far off we are from reaching that goal.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">My thoughts are with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Visa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Visa</a> at this difficult time. <a href="https://t.co/BdWIkjdbfp">pic.twitter.com/BdWIkjdbfp</a></p>— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) <a href="https://twitter.com/mrnickharvey/status/1002623354581471233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
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The company claimed it had no reason to believe the hardware failure was down to "any unauthorised access or malicious event", but many customers were outraged as the statement came only five hours after the credit provider had acknowledged the issue which caused chaos in multiple countries.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">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.</p>— Bank of Ireland (@talktoBOI) <a href="https://twitter.com/talktoBOI/status/1002569512619737088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
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In supermarkets, shoppers were stuck being unable to pay for items, with many of them going back home without anything.
Only in the UK, Visa’s payment systems account for about a third of all transactions.
People were stuck on bridges for hours as drivers were unable to pay for the toll by card and some had no other means of payment with them, leaving long traffic jams.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Visa Europe confirms it is experiencing a service disruption that’s preventing some transactions <a href="https://t.co/uhwJH0fSyJ">https://t.co/uhwJH0fSyJ</a> <a href="https://t.co/XJvS1HSQqy">pic.twitter.com/XJvS1HSQqy</a></p>— Bloomberg (@business) <a href="https://twitter.com/business/status/1002588803826110465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
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In the UK, a Twitter user from Manchester, explained: "We have spent all day boating to moor up at a riverside pub in Kidlington for a birthday meal only to find the visa payments are not working. Having only £20 between us we have had to opt for a birthday drink instead. There is no cash point for miles around and no car as we are on the canal boat."
Related coverage: https://thegoldwater.com/news/27220-Australia-NAB-To-Compensate-Customers-For-5-Hour-Outage#27221
In Germany, shoppers at the local Primark in Berlin reported half an hour waiting in lines whilst other shops in the centre experienced similar issues.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The issue caused by Visa Europe that affected impacted transactions across Europe and the UK has been fixed. <br>We are Sorry to all members that were affected by this issue. All our services are working as normal.</p>— Nationwide UK (@AskNationwide) <a href="https://twitter.com/AskNationwide/status/1002682789857300480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
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A Visa spokesman acknowledged that the European-wide systems failure had "impacted customers across Europe" whilst the credit provider apologised for falling "well short" of its reliability goals.
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