QUEUES of customers across Europe - including in Britain and Ireland - yesterday and last night wishing to pay by debit card were left frustrated at the unavailability of their cards.
Visa confirmed they were experiencing a "service disruption" rendering thousands upon millions of customers' cards rendered useless in trying to pay for goods and services.
While customers could access cash from their local ATM, anyone wishing to pay solely by visa debit was left with a card not working.
People queue at banklinks in Dublin as visa transactions affected by service disruption @rtenews pic.twitter.com/vTw20cFZYL
— Aisling Kenny (@KennyAKE) June 1, 2018
Social media users remarked on the crisis, sympathising with retails workers having to explain the situation and laughing at the unfortunate situation.
My heart goes out to all the retail workers having to put up with customers kicking off #visa
— Alice (@Alliicceee) June 1, 2018
I’ve spent 40 minutes of the last hour in queues for ATMs, and any shop I’ve gone into is only taking cash.
The absolute panic on people’s faces is kind of a little bit funny.
Everyone’s reliance on one company is slightly worrying. #Visa #Dublin
— Sarah (@_Sar_o__) June 1, 2018
The issue has thankfully been resolved, and Visa has said it was due to a hardware failure.
The company stated: "Visa has resolved a technical issue, which occurred earlier today in Europe and prevented some consumers from using Visa for payments.
"The issue was the result of a hardware failure in one of our European systems and is not associated with any unauthorized access or cyberattack."
— VisaNews (@VisaNews) June 2, 2018
