Card Payments Shut Down Nationwide After Telco Suffers Hours-Long Blackout

MPs warn the incident reveals the risk of becoming a cashless society.

A credit card is placed into a card machine for processing payments in La Puente, Calif., on Sept. 11, 2023. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

A nationwide outage suffered by Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider, Optus, has left thousands of businesses and local government authorities unable to process money payments.

Coffee shops, councils, bowling alleys, and hotels were among those impacted by the nationwide Optus blackout in Australia, which is estimated to have impacted 10 million customers and 40,000 businesses.