Worldpay's World Cup outage puts payments resiliency in the spotlight

• Key insights: Worldpay suffered an outage during a World Cup match between England and Ghana.
• What's at stake: The tournament is expected to boost payments at small businesses, placing a stress on resiliency.
• Forward look: The outage comes as Global Payments is combining with Worldpay following Global Payments' merger. 

The last thing any payment company wants is an outage, particularly during a high-profile event such as the World Cup.

But that's what Worldpay faced late Tuesday evening. The company was unable to process payments for several hours while a World Cup match between England and Ghana was underway.

The outage does not appear to be directly related to the World Cup, but the blowback for Worldpay is all the same. U.K. media reports were full of Worldpay-headlined stories about people at pubs, restaurants and supermarkets who were unable to use cards and other digital payment methods, drawing fresh attention to payment resiliency in an age of real-time processing and agentic commerce.

"High-intensity events like major sporting fixtures create narrow windows where every failed transaction represents lost income and, potentially, a lost customer," Scott Dawson, CEO of DECTA, a U.K. payments company, said in an email. "A failed payment can be enough to send a customer to a competitor whose services are still available, like the pub next door. The question isn't whether another outage will happen, but how prepared businesses are when it does. Staying online is something that must be [a part of] every payment journey."

Offline

Worldpay and Global Payments, which recently closed a $24 billion acquisition of Worldpay, did not return requests for comment.

In a status update posted Wednesday morning New York time, Worldpay said "we have resolved the technical issue with Funding & Payouts. Some customers who were scheduled to receive funding 24-Jun-2026, will receive funds 25-Jun-2026 or one-day later than expected according to the customer funding cycle."

In an earlier statement Tuesday evening, Worldpay said "we are continuing to experience a technical issue which has caused a one-day funding delay for a subset of merchants on the Worldpay Total (WPT) platform. Technical resources are working to process the affected files." Worldpay did not release the number of customers affected, and said a third-party power outage was the cause.

Soccer and small business

The outage was poorly timed, as the World Cup is an opportunity for a boost for the sort of small businesses that were affected.  

SumUp reports 68% of consumers prefer a local bar or restaurant over a chain, with 33% expecting to spend more money than usual at these local spots during match days, and among full-time workers, that figure rises to nearly 40%. And 74% of fans say they'd seek out small businesses hosting World Cup events or offering deals, according to SumUp, noting that number is 80% among Hispanic and Black fans, who are among the sport's most passionate supporters in the U.S.

The increase in payment volume pressures merchants and payment companies to have a backup and a system to capture technology glitches and potential fraud risks quickly, according to David Trecker, head of digital assets strategy at FIS. "You don't just roll out of bed and handle these types of payment spikes," Trecker told American Banker.

And while a temporary outage likely won't cause substantial harm to Worldpay's earnings, it comes at a transitional time for the firm. Global Payments is acquiring Worldpay following the acquisition. In addition to scale, the deal can also help Global Payments' stablecoin strategy through  Worldpay's collaboration with cryptocurrency-technology firm BVNK, which will enable Worldpay's clients to process USDC payments. Worldpay also recently entered a partnership with buy now/pay later lender Affirm to integrate Affirm's lending options into Worldpay's software clients.

The combined Global Payments/Worldpay also adds users for Global Payments' revamped payment product suite, which is branded Genius. Global Payments' earnings are challenged due to geopolitical issues, according to Andrew Harte, director and fintech analyst at BTIG."The ongoing Middle East travel headwinds are weighing on growth more than previously anticipated," Harte said in a research note.