The global outage of Microsoft machines caused widespread chaos, but for true cash fanatics it was a moment to enjoy some “I told you so” confirmation as digital payment systems crashed.
Australia was hit by a “bad” software crash between US contractor CrowdStrike and systems running Windows on Friday afternoon, knocking out online banking services and advising supermarkets and other stores that they could only accept cash.
On the Facebook page ‘Cash is King’, a user posted an image of supermarket automatic checkouts that were closed and showed the ‘blue screen of death’, indicating that the checkouts were out of order.
“So if it suits them, cash is fine,” the user responded with a shrug and laughing emojis.
“Well I’ll be damned… it’s proven once again that cash is king,” replied another user.
“I just got home from work… My wife is already asking for money. It’s been a long time since she asked me,” another said.
“What a joke and they want to get rid of cash,” said another.
There were many more posts and comments calling for justification.
Microsoft’s global outage caused automated checkouts in supermarkets across the country to crash
“Everyone who had cash today is laughing because the banking system collapsed,” one person wrote.
“This is another example of what we’re all talking about,” said another.
“Won’t the banks and the government hate this? They’ll be banging their heads against the wall because it proves we’re right,” said another.
Another user wrote that the day’s events could provide a lesson even for those who carried cash.
“Just a reminder: While cash is best, make sure you have plenty of change, dollars and change on you,” they said.
‘In times like these, when businesses that use less cash are actually getting more cash users, today we find that they don’t have enough change to give us the correct change because they keep getting $50 bills.
‘Keep enough little things aside for energy at times like these. Hopefully the world will wake up after today, but I doubt it..
Also at X, many people felt good about using cash.
For those who favor retaining physical currency, Friday’s technology outage gave them an “I told you so” moment
“Cash is king. How’s your digital ID, Canberra?” tweeted former Victorian police officer and Liberal Democrat candidate Krystle Mitchell.
“On behalf of all the ethnic groups who have hidden their money in their gardens. LOLZ (laughing heartily),” tweeted Australian columnist Gemma Tognini.
“Not just the ethnic background,” one X user responded.
‘Some of us, born and bred Australians, walked up to the checkout today smiling too.’
Retired basketball star Andrew Bogut thought it would be funny to post a tweet showing the harsh realities of doing business without the convenience of automatic payments.
“Mc Donald’s Berwick only accepts cash and uses an old fashioned calculator to calculate everyone’s change,” one person tweeted, along with a series of laughing emojis to which Bogut added a few of his own.
Due to the fact that automated checkouts are no longer working, there were ‘huge queues’ at some branches of Coles, Woolworths and 7-Eleven on Friday.
At Woolworths, the technology crisis caused many, but not all, cash registers to fail and no longer process transactions.
This led to six Woolies temporarily closing their doors, with the supermarket chain saying some locations had ‘fewer checkouts available than normal’.
A guy posted on X: ‘90% of my local Woolworths registers had it (blue screen of death). Queues a mile long, absolute chaos. National outage? Local?’
Meanwhile, Coles Broadway, one of Sydney’s largest supermarkets, has sent staff into the store to tell customers: “Cash only. EFTPOS is down.”
Many supermarkets saw chaotic scenes as digital payment systems failed, forcing some stores to close altogether
At another Coles branch, the shutters were seen coming down as the manager decided to close the store for the day.
A frustrated female shopper posted that she had a ‘trolley full of groceries’ and Woolworths announced over the loudspeaker that they are currently unable to accept debit cards due to a ‘Microsoft outage’ and can only accept cash. Huh?!!
‘I hope everything will be working again by the time I’m done, otherwise I’ll have to ditch my cart and run to the nearest ATM.’
A male customer wrote: ‘All the POS machines at my local one by one have been crashing. I’m wondering if this is a widespread problem?’
On X, @Till_Payments posted the message ‘#ServiceUpdate: Large-scale IT outage impacting Australian businesses across the country.’ It also added a click for ‘live updates as our team works to resolve the issue.’