Britain's largest baked goods chain, Greggs, has been hit by a technical problem with payments, making it impossible to accept cash or cards during busy trading hours this morning.
This has forced some stores to temporarily close, which would normally be frustrating and embarrassing for any retailer. But these are not normal times, with four of the UK's biggest retailers closed in the space of a few days due to technical glitches since Friday.
Now UK retail and food chains are waiting nervously to find out if this is just a strange coincidence or if someone is targeting their payment system software.
The hugely popular Greggs has more than 2,450 bakeries across the UK, and stores across the country have been affected by IT issues, with some temporarily posting 'closed' signs on their doors. or asking customers to order outside the store. Use the Greggs mobile app before coming to collect your purchase.
Greggs tried to downplay the company's problems, saying some stores had problems accepting payments on Wednesday, but the problem had been resolved by mid-morning.
A spokesperson said: “The technical issue that affected checkouts in some stores this morning has been resolved.'' The majority of affected stores are now accepting card and cash payments again, and we expect the issue to be fully resolved soon. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our customers. ”
Four retailers were affected.
But Greggs is just the latest retailer to be hit by technical problems. Fast food giant McDonald's on Friday suffered its own technical problems in a number of countries, including the UK, Japan and Australia, but the chain insisted it was not caused by a cybersecurity attack.
McDonald's said the outage started around midnight Central Time and that “many markets” were back online by Friday afternoon, but Brian Rice, the company's global chief information officer, said: He insisted that the problem was not due to a cyber attack. Rather, they are unspecified changes to IT systems operated by third parties.
“What happened today is an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve this issue,” Rice said in a message to McDonald's employees and franchise partners. ” he wrote.
But the next day, British grocery chain Sainsbury's was forced to cancel home deliveries due to its own IT failure. The company said it was unable to fulfill the majority of scheduled online orders, potentially impacting more than $11 million worth of orders.delivery
The supermarket giant said the costly glitch was caused by an overnight software update that left customers unable to make contactless payments in some stores or order food online, but Simon CEO Roberts sent a letter Sunday afternoon apologizing to customers, saying all affected systems were at fault. Go back online.
Tesco technical problem
At a breathless weekend, just hours after the Sainsbury's problem, Tesco admitted it had been forced to cancel online orders due to another unspecified “technical issue”.
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We are currently working to resolve a technical issue and have had to cancel some online orders scheduled for delivery today.” We apologize for the inconvenience. ”
All four retailers now blame the outages on glitches or failed overnight updates, despite the huge costs of downtime being wasted due to the issues these caused. claims.
However, the increasing number of power outages has raised concerns about both the UK's reliance on technology to enable transactions and the risk of cyber-attacks, with the exception of a post-pandemic cashless society.
Last year, Ace Hardware and Staples were hit by cyberattacks, Sweden's Co-op and UK independent store group Swan Retail were also hit by cyberattacks, and WH Smiths, Boots and Lush were also targeted in the UK.
So far, the occurrence of this latest technology issue appears to be purely coincidental…but then the power goes out, and the conspiracy theories will begin.
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