Authorize.net Is Down!

Fire brings down authorize.net services

The largest credit card and e-heck payment service on the web, Authorize.net, has been down for a while, which means that a lot of other services went down too, because they can’t accept payments anymore.

On July 2nd, 2009, 11pm, the entire web infrastructure for Authorize.net (main website, merchant gateway website, etc) went offline and stayed down all morning July 3, 2009. None of the over 200,000 merchants who use Authorize.net payment gateway were able to process credit cards. Authorize.net's toll free numbers were unavailable, as was much phone service in Seattle, and their toll numbers reported that they were "closed for the holiday" and voicemail was full. Other companies that have nearby offices have reported that there was a fire. Company used twitter to communicate on going updates, username authorizenet on twitter.

Authorize.net's Web site was down for hours. It was back up early Friday afternoon and appeared to be working. The company posted updates on Twitter Twitter throughout the day. At about 11 a.m. Friday it said its merchant interface was working again

"may be slow to access, but it is up."

Verizon Communications Inc. spokesman Jon Davies said the company's DSL service in the Seattle area was temporarily disrupted. The Web site for Adhost, a Seattle based Web-hosting company, was down as well and phone service to the company was out. Microsoft's new Bing Travel service was also knocked offline by the blaze. The company said it expected things to be working again by about 5 p.m. Friday. The small fire started in the basement of Fisher Plaza at an electrical vault - the section of the building where city power lines meet the building's transformers, said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen. Thomsen said that it appears equipment failure on the part of the customer caused the fire.