McDonald’s Crashed? Outages Reported at the Fast-Food Chain’s Outlets Around the World

Operations at the global fast-food chain McDonald’s have slowed Friday, as widespread IT system outages hit stores in multiple countries across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, leaving staff unable to process electronic orders and hungry customers frustrated.

McDonald’s Japan posted on X on Friday afternoon local time that they were experiencing a “system failure” and in another post said that “many stores nationwide are temporarily closed.”

Screens of self-ordering kiosks as well as order terminals used by employees were either black or displaying “out of service” messages, according to photos taken in restaurants in Singapore and Australia, while customers have complained that they have also been unable to order on the McDonald’s app.

Australian media reported that some stores have shut down entirely while others are only taking cash orders. In Singapore and Japan, McDonald’s employees have been spotted accepting cash from customers and calculating orders on paper.

“We are aware of a technology outage currently impacting our restaurants nationwide and are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for McDonald’s Australia told media outlets. “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank customers for their patience.”

“The issue is now being resolved,” McDonald’s Corporation, headquartered in the U.S., said in a statement to TIME. “Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event,” it noted, as rumors have swirled on social media of the company being targeted by hackers. McDonald’s did not clarify at the time the known extent of the outage nor details of how or when it would be fully fixed.

Hours after this story was published, McDonald’s publicly shared a statement that was sent to global employees, franchisees, and development licensees and attributed to Global Chief Information Officer Brian Rice, explaining that the “global technology system outage” was caused “by a third-party provider during a configuration change” and “was quickly identified and corrected.”

“Many markets are back online,” the statement continued, “and the rest are in the process of coming back online. We are closely working with those markets that are still experiencing issues.”

Stores in New Zealand had also been affected, with a spokesperson telling local media that they’re “experiencing an IT issue that’s impacting their ability to process orders.”

McDonald’s Hong Kong posted on Facebook that mobile orders and self-ordering kiosks are not working due to “computer system failure,” urging customers to order directly with staff at the restaurant. 

The McDonald’s Taiwan website said that its delivery service has been suspended for “system maintenance.”

The outage also apparently affected the fast-food chain’s stores in China. On Weibo, the phrase “McDonald’s crashed” is among the top trending topics, with a total of over 48 million views and counting on posts related to the issue.

On social media and Downdetector, a platform where users can report and view outages in real time, people flagged similar technical problems with orders in Austria, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Since its establishment in 1940 in California, McDonald’s has grown to become one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, with around 40,000 stores globally, including more than 12,000 across Asia and more than 1,000 in Australia.

“Reliability and stability of our technology are a priority, and I know how frustrating it can be when there are outages” the statement from Rice, McDonald’s chief information officer, said. “What happened today has been an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve it.”