Last Friday, the CrowdStrike outage disrupted operations for airlines, banks, and media organizations worldwide, but major U.S. card networks Visa and Mastercard said their networks were not affected, although cardholders may have felt indirect impacts.

As the world's largest card network company, Visa and the second-largest, Mastercard, both confirmed that despite the CrowdStrike update pushed to Microsoft systemserroneous cybersecurity updatecausing chaos, their networks ran smoothly on Friday.

A Visa spokesperson said on Friday: "There is currently no indication that this issue has impacted Visa's payment processing capabilities. Our systems are operating normally. We are aware of reports that some users were unable to complete payments and are working with financial institution clients to understand potential impacts on their services to cardholders and merchants."

Although the card networks themselves were not compromised, this does not mean their issuing banks and merchants were unaffected by the CrowdStrike outage. According to reports from British media, which were ahead of U.S. time zones, cardholders in UK stores felt the impact of the outage early Friday morning.

Since the outage occurred just after midnight Eastern Time in the U.S. and IT issues were resolved within hours, U.S. cardholders may have encountered fewer problems. However, at least one analyst believes the overall recovery could take longer.

Mizuho Securities analysts wrote in a Friday report: "Earlier this morning, reports indicated that an erroneous software update from CrowdStrike caused millions of Microsoft Windows systems to crash, leading to severe business disruptions across numerous global organizations. A fix has been deployed, but we expect full recovery and remediation to take several days."

The largest U.S. bank, and alsothe country's largest credit card issuer, JPMorgan Chase, was alsoaffected by the CrowdStrike outage, but the bank said its cardholders were not impacted.

A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson said: "The CrowdStrike outage did not have a direct impact on our credit card operations."

Other major card issuers were cautious when asked about the outage's impact on cardholders. A Wells Fargo spokesperson declined to comment on whether the bank's card transactions were affected, while a Capital One Financial spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Regardless, the troubles faced by CrowdStrike, headquartered in Austin, Texas, and its client Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, highlight how any minor failure in the digital ecosystem of financial institutions can ripple through the broader international financial system.

Chris Stanley, a banking analyst at Moody's, said via email: "The CrowdStrike outage highlights the interconnected nature of the modern risk landscape. Beyond credit, banks must manage a range of risks and opportunities."

Mastercard's statement was similar to Visa's. A company spokesperson said on Friday: "There is no indication that these issues are affecting our systems."

The smaller network operated by Discover Financial Services, which also runs a bank, was also unaffected. A company spokesperson said via email on Friday: "The issues stemming from today's CrowdStrike software update did not impact any systems on Discover's global network."

American Express did not immediately respond to a request for comment.