MasterCard’s little blunder earlier in the week. which saw many customers unable to make transactions with their cards, has finally been explained.

When asked about their two days of technical difficulties, MasterCard told The Register that the two days of delayed transactions were caused by technical problems associated with issuing bank submitted data. However MasterCard neglected to comment on Saturday 29 when a large number of UK consumers claimed their cards were being refused in shops.

Last night, MasterCard sent The Register the following statement :

"On Saturday 29 September, between approximately 13:30 and 17:00 BST, there was a limited outage to the authorisation service for UK Domestic Maestro transactions, impacting a number of cardholders and retail merchants."

MasterCard added that corrective measures have been taken with Maestro to ensure the fault does not reoccur and assures us that all transactions are proceeding as normal.