Queues reported at cash points and checkouts as credit cards not accepted

Queues reported at cash points and checkouts as credit cards not accepted

A credit card transaction system processing outage caused major disruption on the UK High Street this weekend.

Reports from the BBC said that Sainsbury's, Waitrose and B&Q were among those hit from 2pm last Saturday.

Sainsbury's reportedly said its 872 stores were affected for about 20 minutes. While, like B&Q and Waitrose, it said it was able to complete payments using back-up facilities.

But these back-up facilities still resulted in long queues at checkouts and cash points.

Payment provider admits to “issue”

Barclaycard, which counts Waitrose as one of its customers, told BBC News it had experienced a "technical issue", but was waiting to assess initial technical reports on its cause.

"We had a technical issue between 14h12 and 14h30 which resulted in some cards being declined."

Both the retailer, Tesco and payment provider, Visa Europe, on the other hand, said their transactional systems were running normally.

One of many users of micro-blogging social network website, Twitter referenced the disruption: "Saturday afternoon in Sainsbury's. All card payments down. Chaos!"