Image caption A Sainsbury's store in Vauxhall, London, is not taking card payments

Visa says its service is "close to normal" again following a system failure which left customers across Europe unable to make some purchases. Visa V, +0.10% was experiencing a service disruption in parts of Europe on Friday as merchants and consumers tweeted about an inability to use or accept Visa-branded cards, with some businesses posting signs that advised customers to either use cash or cards offered by Mastercard Inc. MA, +2.76% or American Express Co. AXP, -0.05%

“Visa is currently experiencing a service disruption,” the company told MarketWatch in a statement. LONDON – Visa users in several European countries reported being unable to make payments with their credit and debit cards on Friday, and the company said it was experiencing a “service disruption.”

The credit card firm said the incident was “preventing some Visa transactions in Europe from being processed.”

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“We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation,” Visa said in a statement. “We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation.”

HSBC’s UK Twitter account replied to a customer query on Twitter: “We believe there may have recently been issues with Visa’s payments processing.
Visa card payments are disrupted throughout Europe due to a network failure. The disruption results in large queues at supermarkets and petrol stations. Mastercard and American Express say they were not affected.