Mastercard Payments Halted
Global Mastercard outage hits Australia, causing widespread payment declines and bank disruptions
Key Points
Tap-to-pay via Mastercard in digital wallets (on both iPhone and Android) was affected, causing widespread checkout delays even when cards were present.
Downdetector indicated a surge in outage reports across Australia, with more than 2,000 people reporting issues since about 12pm AWST, and later reports around 3pm citing roughly 1,700 issues.
A commonly advised workaround was to insert the card and select 'savings' to complete payments via EFTPOS, a guidance issued by CommBank and echoed by other banks.
Banks including NAB and Commonwealth Bank confirmed the issue was worldwide, with Apple Pay and Westpac services affected as part of the global Mastercard outage.
Some ATMs reportedly experienced issues during the outage, adding to the mix of service disruptions reported across channels.
A global Mastercard outage struck Australia on Saturday, leaving thousands of shoppers unable to pay at checkouts across Sydney, Melbourne, and other major cities. Tap-to-pay stopped working, Apple Pay failed, and even some ATMs ran into trouble, according to 7News and Daily Mail.
Mastercard later confirmed the disruption was caused by a scheduled system update that went wrong. The company said services have since been restored, according to News24 Australia.
Scheduled System Update Triggered the Global Failure
Mastercard confirmed that a planned system update caused the worldwide outage. The update knocked out card payments across multiple countries, with Australia among the hardest hit. Services were later restored after the issue was identified and fixed, News24 Australia reported.
The outage hit at around 12pm AWST on Saturday. By 3pm, roughly 1,700 Australians had reported issues on Downdetector. At its peak, more than 2,000 reports flooded in, according to 7News. That made it one of the largest payment disruptions seen in Australia in recent memory.
Tap-to-Pay and Apple Pay Failed Across Major Banks
The outage hit digital wallets hardest. Tap-to-pay on both iPhone and Android stopped working. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Mastercard contactless payments all failed at checkout, Daily Mail reported. Banks affected included Commonwealth Bank, NAB, and Westpac.
CommBank confirmed the issue was global and not limited to Australia. NAB echoed the same message. Physical Mastercard cards still worked in some cases, but only through a specific workaround. Some ATMs also reported problems during the outage, adding to customer frustration, according to Kalgoorlie Miner.
Insert Your Card and Select 'Savings' to Pay
CommBank issued a clear workaround for customers stuck at the register. Instead of tapping, customers were told to insert their physical card into the EFTPOS terminal and select 'savings' rather than 'credit.' This routes the payment through a different network that was not affected by the Mastercard outage.
Other banks quickly shared the same advice. The workaround helped many shoppers complete purchases during the outage. Banks also urged customers to carry cash as a backup, since card-based payments remained unreliable while the problem persisted, according to Daily Mail.
Outage Exposes Australia's Reliance on Contactless Payments
The disruption caught many Australians off guard. Tap-to-pay has become the dominant way people pay at stores, cafes, and restaurants. When it stopped working, long queues formed and some customers had to abandon their purchases entirely, 7News reported.
Banks and consumer groups used the moment to remind the public to always carry a backup. Cash and physical cards inserted into EFTPOS terminals proved to be reliable alternatives during the outage. The incident highlighted how a single global system failure can ripple quickly across an entire country's payment network, according to Kalgoorlie Miner.
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