“Tap and No”: Thousands Hit by Westpac EFTPOS Outage, Leaving Aussies Red-Faced at the Checkout

Updated: 10 December 2025

A routine midweek shop turned into an awkward scramble for cash on Wednesday after a widespread Westpac EFTPOS outage left thousands of Australians unable to tap their cards at the checkout. From suburban cafés to petrol stations and bottle-os, Westpac merchant terminals suddenly stopped playing ball just after lunchtime.

According to a report in news.com.au , more than 3,000 customers lodged outage reports not long after 12.30pm. A Westpac spokesperson said the bank was aware some customers were having trouble accessing services and insisted teams were working to restore systems “as quickly as possible”, apologising for the disruption.

A holding message on Westpac’s phone line went further, confirming “issues impacting merchant terminals” – a clear sign the problem sat squarely in the EFTPOS network rather than a complete banking blackout. Rival majors NAB and Commonwealth Bank said their systems were operating normally, underlining that this was a Westpac-specific headache.

Lunch rush, no tap-and-go

For shoppers, the timing could hardly have been worse. The outage hit in the middle of the working day, when many Australians were ducking out for lunch, topping up fuel or doing a quick grocery run. Social media filled quickly with stories of declined cards, embarrassed customers and small business owners apologising for a problem they couldn’t control.

While Westpac hasn’t yet published a detailed technical explanation, the bank’s own merchant support material acknowledges the risk of outages. Its “help during outages” guide explains how merchants can use Electronic Fall Back (EFB) mode to store transactions offline when the network drops, then send them for processing once connectivity returns.

Westpac’s public EFTPOS status page also flagged that some merchant systems were degraded, giving businesses a live snapshot of the disruption and reminding them to contact support if terminals remained offline.

Small businesses carry the cost

Big retailers can often fall back on multiple payment providers. For many small Australian businesses, Westpac is the only terminal on the counter. Every declined tap during an outage is a lost sale, a longer queue and sometimes a customer who simply walks out the door.

The latest glitch follows a string of incidents in recent years where Westpac customers have struggled to access online or mobile banking, fuelling frustration about the resilience of core banking systems. Other outages across the industry – from telco failures to global IT problems – have already shown how quickly digital payments can grind to a halt when a single piece of infrastructure fails.

Consumer advocates and technology experts have repeatedly warned that banks and payment providers need stronger safeguards and clearer communication when systems go down. After a separate online banking disruption in 2024, Westpac publicly apologised and promised to improve outage handling, saying it understood how important 24/7 access is for customers.

What customers can do in an outage

For ordinary Australians, there’s not much you can do to fix a bank’s network – but there are ways to blunt the impact:

• Have a backup card or bank: If one bank’s systems fall over, a second card from a different bank can be a lifesaver at the checkout.
• Keep a small amount of cash handy: Many smaller shops will revert to cash-only trading during major EFTPOS issues.
• Use mobile wallets where possible: Sometimes app-based payments stay up even when a particular terminal brand is struggling.
• Check the status page: Westpac’s service status page is the best place to see whether issues are ongoing or resolved.

In the meantime, the latest outage is another reminder that Australia’s love affair with tap-and-go comes with a catch: when the invisible pipes underneath the system fail, everyday life suddenly feels a lot less seamless.

For full background on the incident, you can read the original reporting on the Westpac EFTPOS outage at news.com.au , which first detailed how thousands of customers and businesses were affected across Australia.

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