Visa payment system hit by outage in Europe

Visa said on Friday that a “service disruption’’ had hit its payment system, leaving some businesses unable to process purchases by its cardholders.

The extent and cause of the outage are unclear.

“We are currently experiencing a service disruption, which is preventing some Visa transactions in Europe from being processed,’’ the card giant said in a statement.

“We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation.

“We will keep you updated.’’