Shoppers report payment issues with Visa and Mastercard

There was a surge in people saying they are having problems using their Visa and Mastercard cards on Thursday morning, according to online service status website Downdetector.

Supermarkets such as Asda and Sainsbury's appear to have been impacted by the issue.

From 7:50am reports of issues with Visa started to trickle in, hitting a peak of 588 reports at 9:45am. The majority of issues were listed as payment-related problems.

Visa confirmed to ITV News that it was having problems with payments via a spokesperson: “We are aware that some cardholders are experiencing issues when making payments. While Visa’s systems are operating normally, we are working with our partners to investigate.”

Visa later said: “We are aware that a merchant payment provider reported issues this morning that impacted some cardholders. It has been reported that this issue is now resolved. Visa’s systems continue to operate normally.”

Mastercard similarly saw a spike of issues raised on the site, with 23 problems reported at 8.06am, increasing to 126 at 9:44am. All of the issues cited 'purchases' or 'payments' as the type of problem.

The payment services company said it knew about the issues at certain retailers.

A spokesperson for Mastercard said: “We are aware of some payment transaction issues at select merchants in the UK and are working with our partners to gather more information. There is no current indication that these issues are related to our network."

Mastercard later said: “We can confirm that the Mastercard network has been operating normally and that this morning's issues were not related to our systems.”

By 11:30am there were still more reports of issues with both payment providers coming in, but the numbers had decreased compared to earlier peaks.

Downdetector displays data based on users reporting their experiences and compares the real-time data to data previously collected.

There have also been reports of some supermarkets being unable to process card payments on Thursday morning, including Sainsbury's and Asda.

Some Sainsbury's stores were seen to have "Cash only" signs displayed, as the retailer was unable to accept contactless cards, mobile device payments and Argos Cards.

Sainsbury's said in a statement to ITV News that it was aware of the situation and apologised to customers.

A spokesman said: “Contactless payment is back up and running after being briefly unavailable for a few minutes this morning. This was due to an issue with our third-party payment provider. We’re accepting all payments as usual and continue to monitor the situation. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

When asked to comment on the issue, a spokesperson for Asda said that the payments were "back up and running as expected" following payment problems.

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