Saturday afternoon chaos as card payment systems crash

Chaos was caused in shops across the country as card payment systems crash around 2pm yesterday(Saturday).

Over 870 branches of Sainsbury's were affected by the problem. Waitrose, b&q, Hombease, Argos were among others affected. It caused queues at checkouts and cash points, with people withdrawing money to pay with cash.

A Barclaycard spokesman said it had "experienced a technical issue" which lasted about an hour.

He added: "We would like to apologies for any inconvenience causes and we are conducting a thorough investigation into the cause of this issue."

All stores are now trading normally.