Long queues to pay at Airport Customs are being blamed on slow credit card transaction times.

Recently, letter writers to have complained of waiting up to two hours to pay duty on goods bought overseas.

Collector of Customs Winifred Fostine-DeSilva said she had not heard of such long waiting times.

?There is quite a line up as a result of trying to get credit card payments through,? she said. ?It?s not always a matter of staffing levels.?

She said passengers returning midday were competing with lunchtime shoppers as their transactions were processed, which had led to inordinate delays.

?Whenever we research that, it keeps coming back to that,? Ms Fostine-DeSilva sais, although she stressed the department continually tried to improve procedures.

Bank of Bermuda card processing centre manager Wayne Pimentel said: ?On average when using a standard, bank-issued credit card terminal, the total transaction time is approximately 15 to 20 seconds.

?However, in circumstances where a merchant may have multiple terminals sharing one telephone line, or where the terminals are connected to a merchant?s central switchboard, delays may be experienced.?

Mrs. Fostine-DeSilva said the airport had six lines for credit cards which BTC had said were not being routed through the same trunk.

Mr. Pimental continued: ?For merchants that may be experiencing technical difficulties, we provide a 24-hour on call support service.

?We are always available to discuss alternate processing options with merchants in order to optimise transaction speed time and meet the demands of their customers.?

A Bank of Butterfield spokesperson said card authorisation delays may be caused by several factors.

?These can include the volume of transactions at any given time, as well as the resources of telecommunication service providers (locally and internationally), banks and overseas processors.

?When a card is swiped, an authorisation request is routed off-island to processors, the credit card associations and then back to the bank within ten seconds.

?If, for any reason, the approval is not granted within that time frame, the transaction is dropped and must be reinitiated.?

The spokesperson said the process is mandated by the card associations (e.g. Visa and MasterCard).

Customs hope to implement the long delayed Customs Automated Processing System in the summer which aims to speed up processing of customs declarations with a newly-designed form.