Visa Mastercard outage?

[jennyparnassus]

Was anybody effected by the Visa / Mastercard outage this weekend? We went out to eat yesterday, and the restaurant had signs everywhere that they could only accept cash. We thought that maybe the problem was only limited to that restaurant. Fortunately, we had enough cash on hand.

I just saw in the news that apparently this was a widespread problem that started yesterday afternoon.

[Deleted]

Someone posted about it on MM yesterday. It doesn’t seem to have affected my area (NW FL) but has affected a lot of other places.

[sent]

Given the outrageous amount of fees and the complicated structure of how they charge fees to accept credit cards at small businesses, this is unacceptable. But I remain skeptical that this industry will ever change.

[Gato]

Oh wow, I am quarantined with Covid so I didn't try to use my card yesterday.

This was a good article on it. My H works in IT, although not in cybersecurity; he says his little, unimportant company works around the clock to ward off cyberattacks, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what caused this.

www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-of-global-payments/

[meowmaps]

I had not heard about this but it makes so much sense now. I was trying to buy tickets to something online last night and the system kept saying my Visa card was invalid. Thank you for the heads up.

[mbcdefg]

Yes - I’m in New Jersey and I was next on line in the supermarket when it happened. The poor guy in front of me tried three different cards which didn’t work so he had to go to the store ATM for cash. My groceries were already loaded onto the vent, and by the time it was my turn they figured out it was the whole store, so I ran to the ATM while the clerk was ringing up my stuff.

[quesyrah]

Yes. We went to Lowe’s for blinds and they were only accepting cash. Prior to getting to Lowe’s we had shopped at World Market, Target and Daiso. So I’m curious if the outage happened after we left Daiso or what because our debit (MC) worked fine at those places.

[wildrice]

Weird. I paid for multiple things with a Visa yesterday and didn't have any problems.

[estrellita]

Weird, we went to Panda Express yesterday and had issues. The card was taking forever but after a few minutes it went through. It must have completely gone out after that because they were putting up cash only signs too. But the stores we went to before and after were fine. We were only using Visa cards. I work at a bank so I'm sure I'll hear more about it tomorrow, haha.

[BlondeSpiders]

Ok, maybe that explains my inability to take advantage of Bath & Body Works' $3.50 Wallflowers sale. I tried 2 different cards and couldn't get them to go through. It was late on Friday, so I gave up and decided to try in the morning. Of course, the sale was over, so no wallflowers were bought that day.

Rough life, I know.

[tacokick]

I think this must explain the weird issue I had at IKEA, I was trying to order something on the website while actually in the store and it kept rejecting/timing out my Visa. But I was able to use PayPal instead. I was able to use my card at the actual store though.

[jlt19]

It’s very odd to me how this happened to two separate processors, but no one mentioned American Express or Discover. The article above just mentions Visa, so I’m curious if it was actually their issue but stores didn’t realize it was only Visa, so they shut off all card payments.

[quesyrah]

May 23, 2022 21:50:27 GMT -5 jlt19 said:

It’s very odd to me how this happened to two separate processors, but no one mentioned American Express or Discover. The article above just mentions Visa, so I’m curious if it was actually their issue but stores didn’t realize it was only Visa, so they shut off all card payments.

When we were at Lowe’s the woman I talked to said some cards were working and we were welcome to try.