The hardware malfunction that left millions of people across Europe unable to make card payments on Friday evening has now been resolved, according to Visa.

What the global payments company described as a systems failure forced people to revert to cash, with many ATMs running out of money and shopping having to be left at checkouts.

"Our goal is to ensure all Visa payments 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 Visa account holders for any inconvenience this may have caused," stated Al Kelly, Visa's chief executive.

"The issue was the result of a hardware failure, we have no reason to believe this was associated with any unauthorised access or malicious event."

By Saturday morning, the technical issue was resolved, with customers told that if they attempted a Visa transaction that did not complete as a result of the issue, they should not be charged.

"A small number of cardholders may have pending transactions that could be limiting their spending ability," the company stated. "We are working with your banks to resolve this."

Global card network Visa has confirmed that its operating systems are back to “full capacity” following a technical issue which affected point of sale (PoS) hardware in the UK and across Europe. A statement on the Visa website read: “Visa Europe’s payment system is now operating at full capacity, and Visa account holders can now use Visa for any of their purchases and at ATMs, as they normally would.”

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