Visa card network crashes across UK, Europe

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Web Desk
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A Visa credit card is seen on a computer keyboard in this picture illustration taken September 6, 2017. — Reuters

Visa's payment network crashed across the UK and Europe on Friday, sparking chaos as customers' transactions were failed or being denied, according to a British newspaper.

The company confirmed that it was suffering an outage and investigating the cause, The Guardian reported. The scale of the outage remains unclear.

Visa customers across Europe took to Twitter saying that their payments were not being accepted at shops and petrol stations.

In a statement, Visa said: "Visa is currently experiencing a service disruption. This incident 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."

Mastercard said its payment network was functioning normally. "We are seeing nothing abnormal on our network right now," a spokesman said.

Retailers also confirmed that payments were failing across the UK.

Marks & Spencer said: "We are unable to accept Visa card payments currently. No retailers are able to accept Visa cards."

A Sainsbury's spokesperson said: "We are aware that Visa are currently experiencing problems. We are doing our best to help our customers and apologise for any inconvenience."

However, the situation left some customers abandoning their shopping and walking out of stores.