Dutch payment services provider Adyen was hit by three cyberattacks in the space of five hours on Monday evening, causing disruption to shops, bars and restaurants as well as online retail.

The company said it had been targeted in a series of DDoS attacks, in which servers are paralysed by a sudden surge of simultaneous requests for information, at 7pm, 8.35pm and 11.35pm.

Adyen is one of the world’s biggest providers of secure payments systems in the world, with customers including Meta – the owner of Facebook and Instagram – eBay and Uber. Last year it processed transactions with a total value of €1,286 billion.

The company said its checkout services in the EU had been affected by DDoS attacks, causing errors and delays to payments. The issues were resolved by 3.30am on Tuesday.