Someone holding Visa cards
People are struggling to pay with their Visa cards (Picture: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Card payments went down across the UK this morning leaving Visa and Mastercard customers unable to use their credit or debit cards.

Visa customers have been unable to make payments in major retailers including McDonald’s, Asda, Sainsbury’s and M&S, with several reports made across the UK, according to Down Detector.

The vast majority of people are struggling to make card payments, it’s been reported, with some also struggling with the app.

The cause of the outage is not yet known.

There also seems to be ongoing problems with Mastercard, as customers have been struggling to make payments since just before 8am – though they say they haven’t identified any issues in their network.

Card payments were down in shops across central London on Thursday morning. 

Metro.co.uk saw tills and self-checkouts closed in the M&S on Kensington High Street, with staff saying all systems were down until further notice.

The spike in reports began shortly before 8am, but started to reduce as 9am approached.

Visa has now confirmed to Metro that its systems are working normally.

A Visa spokesperson 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.’

A Mastercard spokesperson told Metro: ‘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.’

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