Card payments at British pubs and supermarkets were disrupted on Tuesday after a power outage affected Worldpay, one of the world's largest payment processing platforms. The outage occurred during the World Cup group game between England and Ghana, causing frustration among football fans watching at pubs, screenings, and restaurants.
Contactless payments fail at Tesco and other stores
Customers reported that contactless payments were not working at several stores, including Tesco branches. Videos on social media showed long queues outside cash machines as people sought cash to complete purchases. A Tesco spokesperson confirmed the issue, stating: “There is an issue with Worldpay at the moment affecting us and other businesses taking card payments.”
Worldpay blames power grid disruption
A Worldpay spokesperson said: “The UK experienced a power grid disruption, which is causing intermittent transaction authorization issues for some Worldpay clients. Our technical teams are engaged and working to address the matter as soon as possible.” On its website, Worldpay added: “A third-party power disruption is causing intermittent transaction authorization issues and tokenization requests errors on some Worldpay platforms. Our technical teams have restored service to some platforms and continue to troubleshoot to restore full service as soon as possible.”
Over 1,000 reports on Downdetector
Monitoring website Downdetector indicated that customers experienced problems making payments at Tesco, with more than 1,000 reports of issues since 8pm. Some pubs and entertainment venues announced on social media that they were only accepting cash payments due to the problems.
Social media backlash
Consumers voiced their frustration online. One wrote: “Global outage on @Worldpay_Global- leaving busy pubs in the UK unable to sell beer to customers who don’t have cash … not great.” Another added: “Unbelievable … busy England game and World Pay goes down on card terminals … Multiple sectors reporting issues of terminals down.”
A Tesco spokesperson later confirmed the issue was resolved: “An issue that affected payments in store and online is now resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” Additional reporting by Sarah Butler.
