WorldPay’s world of pain ends
Shane Happach, WorldPay
Global payments provider WorldPay says it has put an end to two weeks of turmoil which saw millions of payments affected through one of its gateways.
The company had experienced a fretful fortnight which saw many customers unable to receive cash from e-commerce sites (and other non-fintech ones). This led to a boisterous backlash and a lot of angry customers.
WorldPay said at the time it was an “isolated issue” and affected a “very small proportion of our customers (substantially less than 1%) and a small proportion of the transactions that we process daily”.
It is now advising its customers that new transactions running through one of its gateways which had previously experienced settlement issues are now processing “normally”.
Shane Happach, WorldPay’s managing director, Global eCom, says: “We would like to apologise deeply to customers who have been affected by this issue, and, equally, to any of their customers who were impacted.”
Happach adds: “We have already activated detailed working plans for customers using this gateway to ensure we are addressing their individual needs and circumstances.”
The firm is now working to restore its “usual technical configurations and ensure the timely payment of any settlement backlogs that remain outstanding”.
That’s typical
WorldPay says “on a typical day” it processes 31 million mobile, online and in-store transactions. In 2014 it says it handled around 11.5 billion transactions, with a total value of about £370 billion and an average transaction value of £32.24.
It says it supports around 400,000 merchants in 126 currencies across 146 countries, offering over 300 payment methods. In the UK WorldPay says it is the “leader in payments” as it processes approximately 42% of all transactions.
WorldPay was founded in 1989 (as Streamline) and throughout its history has been involved in a number of acquisitions to boost its growth.
