A theater has said its business faces “significant risk” due to its inability to accept payments from customers.

Lighthouse Poole lost access to its payment service on November 7 after its provider, Worldpay, said it had unexpectedly shut it down.

Chief executive Elspeth McBain said the team at the registered arts center and charity were able to set up a temporary payment facility that allowed it to continue selling tickets, but its WorldPay account remained closed until Monday.

World Pay said it did not comment on individual cases but that its policy was to notify customers in advance of changes to accounts.

“This terrible mistake meant Lighthouse was unable to trade in the middle of a busy period, posing a significant risk to our business,” Ms McBain said.

He denied Worldpay’s claims that it was informed of the changes beforehand.

“I cannot understand how Worldpay can deduct a charity’s income without any warning, explanation or information as to how it can reactivate its account,” he said.

It said Worldpay could not advise on how long it would take to restore service once the account had been deactivated.

He added: “This happened through no fault of ours during a routine inspection.”

A spokesperson for Worldpay said in a statement: “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on individual customers.

“To protect our customers, we are required to periodically update customer information in accordance with industry-wide regulatory requirements for all financial services firms.

“We take our regulatory obligations seriously and provide customers with advance notice when information is needed to avoid disruption to our services.

“We work diligently to communicate with our customers to meet these requirements and prevent disruptions, often including multiple notifications and attempts to contact them.”