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Florida payment gateway BridgePay says ransomware caused nationwide outage

Merchants reported card-processing failures as city payment portals went offline while the company worked with federal investigators on recovery.

Exterior of BridgePay Network Solutions’ headquarters office building at 485 N. Keller Rd., Suite 525, in Maitland, Florida, with a blue-glass facade and landscaped entrance.
BridgePay Network Solutions headquarters at 485 N. Keller Rd., Suite 525, Maitland, Florida. (Photo courtesy of CBRE)

BridgePay Network Solutions said a ransomware attack knocked key payment systems offline Friday, disrupting card processing for some merchants and taking municipal online payment portals out of service.

BridgePay, a payments gateway and solutions provider based in Maitland, Florida, said late Friday it confirmed ransomware was behind a systemwide disruption affecting multiple production and testing environments.

In an update on its status page, BridgePay said it contacted federal law enforcement, including the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, and brought in outside forensic and recovery teams. The company said restoration could take time.

Screenshot of a BridgePay Gateway status page titled “Outage – Under Investigation” stating the incident was a ransomware attack, reporting no payment card data compromise, and warning recovery may be lengthy.
A BridgePay Gateway status page update says the company confirmed a ransomware attack and is working with law enforcement and outside firms to restore service. (BridgePay Network Solutions)

“Initial forensic findings indicate that no payment card data has been compromised,” BridgePay said. The company said any files that may have been accessed were encrypted and it had no evidence of usable data exposure as of its latest update.

BridgePay’s status page showed major outages across core systems used for payment acceptance and reporting, including the BridgePay Gateway API (BridgeComm), PayGuardian Cloud API, the MyBridgePay virtual terminal and reporting portal, hosted payment pages, and PathwayLink gateway and boarding tools.

Cities and vendors reported downstream effects. The city of Palm Bay, Florida, said its online billing payment portal was unavailable because of the BridgePay disruption and said it did not have an estimated time of restoration. The city advised residents to use in-person payment options during the outage.

The city of Frisco, Texas, posted a similar notice for its utility billing portal and advised customers to pay in person while the online system remained down.

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Point-of-sale provider Lightspeed also listed an unresolved incident affecting merchants using its Retail (S-Series) integration with BridgePay, saying it was working with BridgePay on an issue the vendor identified on its end.

BridgePay has not publicly identified a ransomware group or given a firm timeline for restoration.

The disruption echoes last year’s MoneyGram outage, when the money-transfer company shut down parts of its network after a cybersecurity issue, highlighting how incidents affecting payment pipelines can halt transactions even when banks and card networks remain available.

BridgePay said it is continuing its forensic investigation and working to restore operations “in a secure and responsible manner,” with updates to follow.

DysruptionHub Staff

DysruptionHub Staff

A collaborative project to bring you the latest cyberattacks impacting the availability of services and goods in the United States.

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