SagePay (formerly Protx) have reported that “British Telecom has confirmed a fire at their Exchange in the Paddington area of London.  This has impacted a huge number of UK businesses, including Sage Pay and the major banks that route transactions through the Exchange. ”

Sage Pay has taken action by quickly moving transaction processing to their backup data centre.  However, the issue has affected connectivity to some banks who rely on the exchange and some sites may currently be unable to process payments on-line.

Please note, as banks and payment providers look for alternative transaction routing solutions away from the Paddington Exchange, this could create some general capacity issues, resulting in transaction ‘time-outs’.