McDonald's IT systems outage impacts restaurants worldwide

McDonald's restaurants are suffering global IT outages that prevent employees from taking orders and accepting payments, causing some stores to close for the day.

The outages started overnight and are impacting restaurants globally, including those in the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK.

"We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," McDonald's said in a statement to BleepingComputer.

"We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event." 

McDonald's Japan has apologized on X, stating that many stores around the country have temporarily closed due to the point of sale system outages.

If you have any information regarding this outage, you can contact us confidentially via Signal at 646-961-3731 or at tips@bleepingcomputer.com.

News of the outage quickly spread on Reddit, with employees sharing that they are unable to take orders, process payments, or open cash registers because the point of sale (POS) systems are down.

"Im in the US and all the restaurants in my franchise are down right now because im getting spammed by all the restaurant managers about it," posted a McDonald's employee in the US.

Some stores shut down until the outage is resolved, while some employees report taking orders via paper and only accepting cash payments.

"Yeah we're now having to take orders via paper, and then paying by cash. Already been yelled at by 7 people, so I'm loving this haha," posted another employee on Reddit.

While many stores are still impacted, there are reports that some stores are seeing signs of recovery, with POS systems slowly coming back online.

BleepingComputer contacted McDonald's again to ask if they would share what caused the technical outages, but a reply was not immediately available.

Update 3/15/24: McDonald's says that the outage was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change.