McDonalds outlet at Hon-Hachinohe Station in Tohoku, Japan. Credit: Terence Toh Chin Eng/Shutterstock.com.

On 14 March 2024, fast-food giant McDonald’s global operations were significantly disrupted due to a widespread IT system outage.

Technical glitches affected stores in multiple countries across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, leading to a temporary halt in electronic ordering and causing inconvenience to customers.

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McDonald’s Japan acknowledged the issue on social media, stating they were experiencing a “system failure” and announcing that “many stores nationwide are temporarily closed.”

In Singapore and Australia, self-ordering kiosks and employee order terminals displayed “out of service” messages. The McDonald’s app also malfunctioned.

In Australia, some stores were shut down, while others could only take cash payments.

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In Singapore and Japan, employees also resorted to transactions in cash and manually calculated orders.

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The cause of the outage remains unknown, with a restaurant manager in Australia telling the Daily Mail that they had not received any information from headquarters over an hour into the incident.

The impact also extended to New Zealand, where it was confirmed that an IT issue was hindering the fast-food chain’s order-processing capabilities.

McDonald’s said in a statement to TIME: “The issue is now being resolved. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event.”

The company also noted rumours on social media that it had been targeted by hackers.

McDonald’s did not provide information on the scope of the outage or the anticipated timeframe for the complete resolution of the issue.