ANZ bank has suffered its second EFTPOS and credit card machine failure in three months with thousands of machines nationwide unable process transactions between 11am and 2pm.
In what is being described as a “technical glitch” customers were unable to use EFTPOS during the outage but could use ATMs and access cash through branch tellers.
ANZ spokesman Stephen Ries said the bank apologised for the inconvenience and it was investigating the exact cause of the problem.
In June, it was revealed some 1.8 million ANZ Bank customers across the country were left with limited cash withdrawals and could not access EFTPOS, or accounts over the Internet and in branches due to an internal network problem.
That glitch hit the organisation less than 24 hours after St George suffered a similar outage from an internal systems error that affected its teller systems and online banking.
The St George branches were thrown back 50 years after a technical fault blacked-out tellers across Sydney and forced operators to fill out manual receipts.
The fault meant operators could not access its Spider teller system. An operator within a Sydney St George Bank branch said the systems were knocked out across the city and staff resorted to pen and paper until the fault was resolved.
Optus, which provides telecommunications for both banks, said it was not to blame for the incidents.
Additional reporting by AAP