Technical issue causes double payment problems for Carrefour customers

If your weekend shopping bill from Carrefour seemed twice as much as usual this week, don’t worry, the supermarket chain said on Monday.

People shopping in their stores on Saturday – or anywhere else where a Belgian Maestro card may have been used – were shocked to discover that they’d been charged twice but, according to Carrefour, the money will be returned in the coming days. Just not by Carrefour, which says the double payment problem has nothing to do with them.

"It's a technical issue," a Carrefour spokesperson explained. "Aggrieved customers will be reimbursed by their own bank. If in a few days they have not received the refund, we invite our customers to contact their bank. Carrefour can't do anything. But we can say there is no longer a problem."

Thousands of people may have been affected by the issue that caused the double withdrawals on Saturday, 24 April. By Monday evening, Carrefour had apparently identified the source. According to the supermarket group, it is a problem which lies with the French payment and transactional services company Worldline which acts as an intermediary between a customer’s bank and the recipient of the fee.

However, Worldline maintains that the problem does not come from its side. In any case, customers affected by this double withdrawal will be reimbursed by their bank, according to Carrefour, which assured customers that it had not received the double amounts even if customers have been charged twice.

There appears to be no way of knowing exactly which stores were affected by the technical issue but the locations from which complaints flooded in suggest that the problem could be nationwide.