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McDonald\u2019s stores in parts of the world had to suspend operations or online orders Friday due to what the company called a \u201ctechnology outage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Locations in Japan, China and Australia temporarily halted use of their in-store kiosks, while others reported McDonald\u2019s app blackouts. This caused some locations to shut down their drive-thrus and others to temporarily cease operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved,\u201d a McDonald\u2019s representative tells TODAY.com. \u201cWe thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNotably, this issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event,\u201d Brian Rice, EVP, global chief information officer at McDonald\u2019s, said in a separate statement posted on its website<\/a>, \u201crather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change.\u201d<\/p>\n On March 15, McDonald\u2019s Australia posted on X<\/a> that earlier in the day it had experienced an outage which impacted all of its restaurants, but that by late evening, most of its restaurants had reopened.<\/p>\n Throughout the day, people in Australia reported closed drive-thru lanes<\/a> and nonfunctioning kiosks and apps.<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s Japan also posted on X that there was a system failure in the country, apologizing for any inconvenience and asking people to \u201cplease wait for a while until the service is restored.\u201d<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s Japan later said<\/a> that many stores across the country had \u201ctemporarily suspended operations.\u201d<\/p>\n The South China Morning Post also reported<\/a> that the mobile app and self-order kiosks of McDonald\u2019s restaurants in Hong Kong also broke down.<\/p>\n According to the SCMP, McDonald\u2019s said on its Chinese-language Facebook page that due to a \u201ccomputer system failure,\u201d its mobile and self-ordering kiosks were not working, asking its customers to order directly at restaurant counters. Later that day, the company said the problem was fixed.<\/p>\n Other places that saw similar outages included the United Kingdom<\/a>, Taiwan<\/a> and Singapore, where a reporter from Channel News Asia said that McDonald\u2019s locations they visited<\/a> were not operating, with self-service kiosks showing black screens.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on TODAY.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n