'We fell SHORT!' – Visa issues apology after CHAOS from card system failure

Millions of Britons were unable to use their payment cards yesterday which sparked fury.

Visa has since apologised and said it “fell well short” of its goal to ensure cards work reliably at all times, but assured customers that Visa is now operating at “close to normal levels”.

A Visa spokesman said on Friday night: “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.”

Visa users complained about the issue on social media on Friday evening.

HSBC’s UK Twitter account replied to a customer query on Twitter: “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.”

It is understood the Bank of England was in touch with Visa about the problem.

Alex Neill, Which? managing director of home products and services, said the issue will have been a “huge inconvenience to customers” and said Visa and the banks need to ensure no-one is left out of pocket.

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

Visa users took to social media to complain and the Bank of England was alerted.

Shopper Tom French said: “It’s carnage in my local Sainsbury’s as none of the machines are working with Visa cards.

“Everyone is having to go out to the cashpoint to pay for shopping.”