A global tech outage has forced some Australian supermarkets to revert to cash transactions, as millions of people wait for the issue that’s affecting retailers, banks, airports and other businesses to be fixed.
Shoppers at Coles and Woolworths have been posting pictures on social media of closed self-service checkouts, and are being asked to pay with cash.
Several customers said there were long queues of people at their local stores as people are forced to use the limited number of traditional checkouts available.
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Woolworths and Coles confirmed some of their stores and other facilities have been impacted by the outage. Both said further updates would be provided as their IT departments work to get the systems back up and running.
Other businesses were seen turning away customers on Friday due to their computers systems being down.
Coles customer x left the Welland supermarket in Adelaide “frustrated” after being told she could not use her credit card to pay for groceries.
As it’s being reported the impacts of the outage rollover into the weekend, she expressed concern about a global movement towards cashless societies.
“When this happens more and more, how are people going to buy food, how are people going to pay their bills,” said
“It worries me, for my kids, for their future, our future (and) how it’s going to be (for) life-threatening events where you need to get internet access.”
The outage is linked to computer security company CrowdStrike and Microsoft. Tech experts said too many updates were pushed out at once and the volume caused systems to crash globally.
CrowdStrike released a statement on Friday evening that said an “erroneous” update was resolved.
“As your devices receive this update you may need to reboot for the changes to take effect and for the blue screen (BSOD) issues to be resolved,” a spokesperson said.
Microsoft 365 said on X that users will see gradual relief as the companies tries to “mitigate” the issue.
The Australian Government said it’s working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator to determined the cause of on the outage, which does not appear to be a cyberattack.
It said triple-0 calls were not impacted.
“There is no information to suggest this is a cybersecurity incident, and they are continuing to engage across key stakeholders,” a government spokesperson said.
