PayPoint to make £50 ‘goodwill’ payment to stores over nationwide system failure

PayPoint is to pay £50 compensation to retailers that lost nearly a whole day of trading after its bill and card payments systems failed on 14 November.

In a letter sent to stores, seen by Better Retailing, chief executive Nick Wiles apoligised for the issue and said: “as a gesture of goodwill we are going to make a payment of £50 to you for the temporary loss of your card processing services.”  The funds are to be added to weekly PayPoint commissions, appearing on its  upcoming 30 November self-billing invoices to be sent to stores.

The firm also claimed it has ‘engaged a third-party specialist firm’ to work with its own tech team to try and prevent further outages. 

However, retailers affected said the payment did not go far enough. “£50 is a joke when you consider how much trade was lost for so many businesses, especially at a time when majority of customers are using card to pay,” said one store owner.  Another described the payment level as an ‘insult.’

The outage follows a similar incident in 2018 where more than one million people were left without means to top-up their electricity and gas meters. The latest outage comes as energy market regulator Ofgem mulls whether to take legal action against PayPoint for restricting access to utility top-ups by abusing its market position with exclusivity clauses.