In case you're wondering why you can't buy something on-line at the moment... Authorize.net down...

What a mess... I design websites, have a number of them with shopping carts. Every host I use has a big notice indicating that Authorize.net is down. Gather there was a fire, which, combined with holiday weekend, has had them down for 5 or more hours.

That means nobody who goes through Authorize.net is selling I'd "assume". I didn't realize how many companies depended on one cog in the buying wheel. I use multiple hosts, turns out all of them use Authorize.net.

Here's the message on one of my hosting sites:

According to dslreports.com "a 'perfect storm' was created by the combination of a data center fire and the July 4 weekend holiday, resulting the company going completely dark for more than five hours and counting. The company's phone lines and this Authorize.net website remains offline as of this writing."

Here's one from another:

"Authorize.net, our credit card processing provider for our e-commerce products, has reported an outage at their data center. At this point, we do not have an ETA for resolution, however, they are working diligently to get their systems online as quickly as possible. During this time, customers using PowerPay may not be able to authorize their purchases. We will provide updates as they become available."

Just what we need in this down economy... I doubt Authorize.net is worried about anything other than their reputation and ability to get back to working order though. Really feel for them as well as every company depending on them to sell.