Techcrunch reports that Payment gateway service provider Authorize.net has been down for several hours, which will have negative implications for its customers. : Authorize.net is used by tens of thousands of e-commerce vendors to accept credit card and electronic checks payments on their websites. PayPal and Google Checkout are still up and running.

According to some forums, there was a fire at a Seattle datacenter which caused a massive technical failure.

Techcrunch also add that nobody is picking up the phone at the U.S. offices of CyberSource, the holding company of Authorize.net. 

Some Twitter tweets say that ‘A fire in Fisher Plaza, Seattle has cause a massive power outage causing leading IP-based payment gateway solution Authorize.Net to go down around approximately 11:15pm PST (last night).”

Authorize.net set up a new Twitter account to keep everyone updated, confirming the cause of the failure was a fire but also stating an ETA for resolution is not available at this time.

Update: Authorize.net reports that full transaction processing has now been restored with Concord EFS.

Ivan Walsh is a technology writer based in Dublin, Ireland. 

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