I am not sure if this belongs to this forum, but since there are so many asking questions about the payment biz, then take a look here :

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=16787 (http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=16787) :)

ouch... but how do credit card transactions like this work? Isn't the card information checked towards the credit card issuer rather than a central database at VISA (in this case)?

Hi Henrik,

You are correct... credit card authorization requests are transmitted to the issuing bank for the card for approval or decline under normal operating circumstances.

There is a provision in the Visa systems for "stand-in" processing as well in the event that an issuing bank is unreachable under certain circumstances.

However, it seems that in this case - the authorization network itself for Visa may have been having some issues. Perhaps there were routing issues to certain banks which would explain why many but not all cards were affected.

This is definitely a highly unusual occurrence for sure.

I talked with my mother and they had problems on that friday morning to process VISA cards through the store's payment system.

There were some program / code rollouts that happened too soon. They had to get the transaction processors to push the changes a day or so early.

Some transaction processors also can approve / deny the transaction depending on the issuing bank, so those transactions were not affected.