A widespread technological issue has struck McDonald’s restaurants worldwide, temporarily closing numerous stores and leaving customers unable to pay for food.
Reports of systems being down have been flooding in from countries like Australia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, and the United States.
The extent of the issue is unclear, but it is believed that internal systems at some restaurants have been offline since 3:10 p.m. local time in Australia.
This has resulted in complete closures in some stores, while others can only take cash orders. Similar problems have been reported in other countries, with customers unable to use self-ordering kiosks or mobile apps to purchase their food.
The situation has caused frustration and inconvenience for McDonald’s employees and customers. In New Zealand, a server crash has prevented the company from taking orders or serving food.
In Japan, the company has apologized for the inconvenience and urged customers to wait until the service is restored.
A McDonald’s employee in the U.K. has also reported being unable to take orders, while customers have experienced issues using the app to place orders.
McDonald’s has issued statements in some countries, including Japan and Taiwan, acknowledging the issue and apologizing for the inconvenience. In the U.S., a spokesperson for the company has confirmed that the problem is unrelated to a cybersecurity event.
The extent of the impact and the estimated time for when systems will be fully functional again is also unknown. In the U.K. and Ireland, it has been reported that the issue has been resolved as of 6:50 a.m. ET. However, other countries are still facing ongoing problems, with some stores remaining closed and others only able to accept cash orders.
McDonalds is unable to serve customers across the country this evening as an IT outage has crashed all internal systems. pic.twitter.com/1tv57vvpb3
— The Project (@theprojecttv) March 15, 2024
