Payment outages are no longer a rare glitch; they are a recurring operational challenge for businesses in the retail and hospitality sectors. While the problem is universal, our research reveals significant differences in how these disruptions play out in the United Kingdom versus France. A comparative look at our reports shows distinct patterns in financial impact, consumer tolerance, and business preparedness across the two countries.
The Financial Stakes of Payment Failure
The headline figures are staggering for both countries. In France, payment failures put €1.9 billion in annual sales at risk, slightly higher than the £1.6 billion (approx. €1.84 billion) at risk in the UK. This suggests a comparable level of overall financial exposure.
However, the primary causes of these losses differ. In the UK, the leading cause of disruption is card machine (POS system) failure, accounting for £392 million in at-risk revenue. In France, network and internet outages are the biggest culprit, jeopardizing €593 million. This highlights a key difference in infrastructure vulnerability between the two markets, yet still shows the significant impact of these payment disruptions.
Both reports reveal that businesses experience an average of five major payment outages per year, often during peak trading hours when the financial impact is most severe.
Consumer Patience: A Race Against Time
One of the most striking contrasts is in consumer patience. When a payment system fails, how long will customers wait before walking away?
In France, the “abandonment zone” begins at 14 minutes. By 22 minutes, most consumers say they would leave without completing their purchase. In the UK, tolerance is even lower. The danger zone starts at just 12 minutes, and like France, most shoppers are gone by the 22-minute mark.
This gap is critical because the average outage duration far exceeds consumer patience in both countries. A typical disruption lasts 84 minutes in the UK and 72 minutes in France. The data is clear: by the time most systems are restored, the majority of customers have already left, resulting in lost sales and damaged trust.
The Disappearing Cash Safety Net
The move to digital payments has left both regions without a reliable backup. In the UK, fewer than 30% of consumers always carry cash. The situation is similar in France, where only 32% of people regularly carry cash.
Even when customers have cash, it’s often not enough. The average amount of cash carried in the UK is £35, which is £12 less than the typical in-store spend. In France, the shortfall is even greater, with an average of €40 in cash to cover a transaction that costs €55 on average. This growing reliance on digital payments means that when systems fail, so does revenue.
Business Preparedness: A Tale of Two Strategies
How are businesses responding to these challenges? In the UK, there’s a growing awareness of the need for resilience, with 48% of businesses investing in secondary internet connections and 43% adopting mobile-based backups. Still, 22% have no backup method beyond cash.
France appears to be further behind in its resilience journey. A significant 43% of French businesses report having no dependable digital backup, relying solely on cash or cheques. Only 30% have a secondary internet connection, and just 20% have implemented mobile payment alternatives like QR codes.
When it comes to the most resilient and secure backup solution, offline card processing, only 37% of UK businesses have integrated this solution, with even lower adoption by French merchants at 28%.
Building Payment Resilience
The data from both the UK and France tells a consistent story: payment disruptions are costly, and customer patience is thin. While the specific vulnerabilities may differ—hardware in the UK versus networks in France—the outcome is the same. Businesses are losing revenue and customer loyalty.
To protect themselves, companies in both regions must move beyond reactive fixes. That’s where FreedomPay comes to the rescue. Our secure payment gateway and payment orchestration platform offers offline card processing for merchants, keeping payments running when the rest of your systems aren’t. When an issue arises, your payments will automatically fall back into offline mode, making sure no revenue or customer is lost.
Get in touch today to see what our payment resilience tools can do for your business.
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