Some Mastercard payments were declined for customers in Australia on Saturday afternoon as a global issue disrupted transactions, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said.
The bank said affected customers could instead insert their physical card and select ‘savings’ at the terminal to process payments through eftpos. The disruption also affected some mobile wallet transactions linked to Mastercard cards.
Reports of failed payments increased across Australia during the afternoon, with customers encountering declined transactions at shops and other businesses. Other card and payment services continued to operate in many cases.
Bloomberg reported that the disruption was linked to a wider global Mastercard issue affecting payments in Australia.
Mastercard later said the problem had been caused by a scheduled system update and that the issue had been resolved, with its systems returning to normal.
