The Edge Blog | Payments Industry Observations | Paragon Application Systems

Visa's Outage Shows the Value of Modern Quality Assurance

Written by Payments Source | August 20, 2018

Planning, preparation and testing are more important than ever in today’s complicated payments landscape. Read more from our own, Director of Product Marketing, Steve Gilde on what payments providers can learn from Visa’s European outage 

Earlier this summer, Visa experienced a significant system failure in the U.K. This outage caused Visa card payments to be rejected at the point of sale all across the country. Ten hours elapsed before systems were fully restored, and social media exploded with consumer outrage over the inconvenience.

Given the position that Visa holds within the electronic payments industry, the outage made international headlines and initiated a Parliamentary inquiry. This isn’t surprising, as Visa’s leadership position in the payments domain means it is subject to the highest levels of accountability and public scrutiny.