Card Payments Disruption Hits Visa and Mastercard Users Across the UK

This morning, card payments went down across the UK, leaving Visa and Mastercard customers unable to use their credit or debit cards. Visa customers reported being unable to make payments in major retailers, including McDonald’s, Asda, Sainsbury’s, and M&S. Numerous reports of issues came from across the UK, according to Down Detector.

The vast majority of people experienced difficulties making card payments, with some also encountering problems with the app. The cause of the outage is still unknown.

Mastercard Also Affected

In addition to Visa, there were ongoing problems with Mastercard. Customers reported struggling to make payments since just before 8 am, although Mastercard has stated that they have not identified any issues in their network.

In central London, card payments were down in shops on Thursday morning. Metro.co.uk observed tills and self-checkouts closed at the M&S on Kensington High Street, with staff indicating that all systems were down until further notice. The spike in reports began shortly before 8 am, but started to decrease as 9 am approached.

Visa Systems Back to Normal

Visa has since confirmed to Metro that its systems are now working normally.