Visa has apologised for yesterday's outage that left people unable to pay for their shopping at tills.

It said services had now returned to normal and the incident was not the result of a malicious attack.

A spokesman said the company had fallen “well short” of its goal to ensure cards worked reliably at all times, but assured customers that Visa was now operating at “close to normal levels”.

He added “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 unauthorised access or malicious event.”

At Asda in Strood duty manager Liam Donner said problem started between 2.30pm and 3pm on Friday.

"People are trying to use their cards and it's not working at all," he said. "One lady went to go out and get cash and the cash machine wasn't working, but most people have still been able to shop in here. They've either got cash or their card has worked

"It just seems random - some cards work and some don't."

Some shoppers at the store such as David Szmytke and Lakhvir Singh were able to pay by trying their card repeatedly until it worked, while others had to empty their pockets of cash.

"I had to pay with cash," said Dharminder Dhadllal, 42. "Luckily I had cash on me, but it would have been nice to keep it."

His wife Ranjeet, had just arrived from Sittingbourne and said the situation was worse there. "I was working in Asda, and it was mayhem," she said. "People buying cigarettes had to go out, get cash and queue again. There was a big queue and it was a lot of hassle."