Visa experienced a 'system failure' that left businesses across the UK and Ireland unable to process payments for several hours.
There were widespread reports of problems across Europe on Friday evening.
In a statement on Friday night, Visa said services were returning to normal.
They said: "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.
"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.”
Our goal is to ensure all Visa cards work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Due to a systems failure, we fell well short of this today. We apologise to all our partners & especially to Visa cardholders. We’re currently operating at close to normal levels. https://t.co/OiZh0fFF2K
— VisaNewsEurope (@VisaNewsEurope) June 1, 2018
Irish retailers and banks had previously confirmed issues with card payments.
We are aware of intermittent issues with AIB cards today. We are working to resolve the matter and apologise for any inconvenience caused. pic.twitter.com/Zk6IZ7Dqnb
— AIB (@AIBIreland) June 1, 2018
Hi everyone....sorry to ruin the Bank Hol Friday feeling but the #Visa issue is affecting our stores at present. If you have experienced duplicate account debits please contact your card provider directly pic.twitter.com/thzEDP0VNK
— Lidl Ireland (@lidl_ireland) June 1, 2018
Due to the current Visa outage, Just Eat orders may not be processed in some areas. Thank you for your patience during this time.
The Just Eat team.— Just Eat Ireland (@JustEatIE) June 1, 2018
