Slashdot: Credit Card Payment Systems Crashed Friday at Stores and Restaurants Across America

Credit Card Payment Systems Crashed Friday at Stores and Restaurants Across America
Published on March 01, 2021 at 04:04AM
On Friday credit-card payment systems went down for major businesses scattered across the U.S. Business Insider reports: Fiserv, one of the leading payments providers in the US, told Insider, "A widespread internet service provider outage has impacted multiple businesses today." Ann Cave, a company spokesperson, added in an email: "Some Fiserv services that rely on internet connectivity were interrupted. The majority have been restored and we are fully focused on restoring the remainder...." Customers on Twitter reported outages at Ikea, Forever 21, McDonald's, and Popeyes, as well as at local places like a car wash and the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. Representatives from the businesses weren't immediately available for comment on Friday. A Chick-fil-A representative confirmed to the site that their systems were unable to process payments for about one hour. "But for some customers, there was a silver lining. Many Chick-fil-A restaurants started handing out free meals during the outage." Miami International Airport also announced warned customers on Twitter about a county-wide outage with credit-card machines "in all taxis." Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace sees a lesson. "You know that cashless society that payment network operators, banks and businesses want? It doesn't work when your payment processor can't process those digital payments."

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