French payments group Worldline has apologised to customers in the UK after a glitch in its systems saw payments refused across a range of shops this morning including Sainsbury's, M&S and Asda.
“Operating conditions were swiftly restored and Worldline’s teams are fully mobilized to monitor the normalised situation. Worldline regrets the situation and any potential inconvenience,” a spokeswoman told reporters.
Card payments went offline at branches of Sainsbury’s and M&S this morning, forcing people to use cash.
The supermarkets apologised to customers who said they could not pay for their shopping on Thursday morning.
A spokeswoman said: “Contactless payment is back up and running after being briefly unavailable for a few minutes earlier this morning.
“We’re accepting all payments as usual and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Visa and Mastercard also said there were no issues with their systems.
“We can confirm that the Mastercard network has been operating normally and that this morning’s issues were not related to our systems," stated Mastercard.
Visa 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.”