New research has laid bare the financial and reputational costs of payment system failures across the UK’s retail and hospitality sectors, with payment outages now responsible for a staggering £1.6 billion in lost sales each year.
The study – Payment Resilience in an Uncertain World – conducted by FreedomPay and Dynatrace in collaboration with Retail Economics – illustrates how fragile digital payment infrastructure is becoming a critical business vulnerability.
UK businesses now experience an average of more than five major payment outages annually. Alarmingly, 61% of these incidents occur during peak trading periods, amplifying their financial and operational impact.
Expectations Vs Tolerance
The report highlights a growing disconnect between business expectations and customer tolerance.
While most consumers will endure no more than six minutes of disruption before walking away, the average payment outage currently lasts 84 minutes – 14 times longer than customer patience.
Businesses, meanwhile, vastly overestimate consumer willingness to wait, assuming a 32-minute threshold that far exceeds the actual 22-minute limit.
Chris Kronenthal, President at FreedomPay, cautions that “disruption is no longer the exception – it’s the norm,” with system outages increasingly driven by cyber-attacks, infrastructure fragility, and climate-related events.
“Many firms still lack proper contingency planning, creating a perfect storm of revenue loss and brand erosion,” he adds.
Commercial Risk of Failure
The data underscores the sharp commercial risk of even short-lived failures.
Between the seventh and eleventh minute of downtime, average sales losses are calculated at £73 million per minute.
By the 22-minute mark, total revenue loss could approach £1.17 billion – around 74% of the total financial risk posed by a single outage event.
Cash NOT King!
The shift towards cashless transactions further compounds the issue.
Fewer than 30% of consumers consistently carry cash, and those who do hold an average of just £35 – well below the typical in-store spend of £47.
As digital dependency grows, particularly among higher-income consumers who favour in-person retail and dining, outages become not only an inconvenience but a material threat to customer experience and loyalty.
Crucially, one in five businesses has no backup payment solution other than cash, and 7% report having no fallback at all.
This lack of redundancy poses a serious threat to operational continuity.
“Payment resilience is no longer just an IT concern – it’s a strategic imperative,” argues Alois Reitbauer, Chief Technology Strategist at Dynatrace.
He stresses the importance of real-time monitoring and adaptive technologies that can pre-empt or rapidly resolve failures.
Richard Lim, CEO of Retail Economics, concludes: “Investing in fail-safe payment systems isn’t merely risk mitigation – it’s central to futureproofing growth and retaining customer trust.”
With disruptions becoming more frequent and costly, payment resilience must be elevated from a back-office function to a boardroom priority.
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