EFTPOS outages at a number of Woolworths’ stores created an inconvenience for shoppers across Australia on Friday morning.
The outage affected between 10 and 20 stores nationally, but the supermarket giant is still investigating exactly what was behind the sporadic issues, 7NEWS.com.au understands.
It is understood the outages were caused by internet issues, with most of the affected stores now back online.
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A Woolworths spokesperson told 7NEWS.com.au: “We’d like to thank customers for their patience with an IT outage affecting EFTPOS in a small number of stores.
“Stores remained open with cash still being able to be used. The cause has been identified and EFTPOS is being restored. Again we thank everyone for bearing with us this morning.“
Woolworths stores in Mawson in the ACT, Pakenham Market Place in Victoria, Stafford in Queensland, as well as in Sydney’s south and west, reported issues online throughout the day.
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One Queensland store flagged the issue to customers on social media at 7.30am, but the system was back up and running when contacted by 7NEWS.com.au at 1pm.
“Pittsworth Woolworths is currently experiencing Internet issues and our EFTPOS system is disabled. Unfortunately, we can only use cash until this issue is resolved,” it said.
The brief outage quickly sparked up the cashless debate online, with commenters posting on social media: “This is why we should not go cashless.”
One customer said while she was able to purchase her groceries with cash, she watched several other customers “walking out” empty-handed.
7NEWS.com.au has contacted Woolworths for comment.
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