Why did Visa card payments go down, what caused the credit and debit card problems and are payments now being accepted?
THE electronic card payment system Visa crashed in the UK and mainland Europe with millions of people affected.
Problems began as Brits were gearing up to start the weekend with the company citing a hardware failure while insisting there was no hack on the system.
What were the Visa card problems in the UK and Europe?
Visa said some card payments were failing across the UK as well as other parts of Europe.
Users across Britain and Europe experienced difficulty with their cards and massive queues developed at cash machines and shops.
Supermarkets used Twitter to alert customers to potential problems, with Tesco suffering issues with its contactless systems.
£1 in every £3 of all UK spending is processed through Visa's systems.
Racegoers at Epsom saw bars closed as tills were unable to handle payments while tolls on the Severn Bridge failed, leading to traffic backlogs.
Customers were advised to take cash with them as cash machine withdrawals remained unaffected.
Are Visa payments working again?
At around 9pm on Friday night Visa said it was almost back to normal.
The card giant said: "Earlier today, Visa had a system failure that impacted customers across Europe.
"Our goal is to ensure all Visa cards work reliably 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
"We fell well short of this goal today and we apologise to all of our partners, and most especially, to Visa cardholders.
"Visa cardholders can now use their Visa cards as we are currently operating at close to normal levels.
"The issue was the result of a hardware failure. We have no reason to believe this was associated with any authorised access or malicious event."