Chaos as payment card systems crash

Consumers had a nasty shock today as attempts to pay for purchases by Visa or MasterCard faced being declined after a payment system failure.

The failure left irate customers scratching their heads as to how they would be able to pay for goods and services.

Taxi and private hire drivers were also left in a very awkward position, trying to explain to passengers why their cards couldn't be accepted.

American Express seemed to be unaffected by the outage and ATM withdrawls were also unaffected.

No reason has been submitted as yet as to what has caused the outage,  but for the time being it seems as though cash is king