Apple Pay and other digital payments reportedly down worldwide to Microsoft outage — what you need to know

technology July 21, 2024No Comments

It’s been a crazy day for just about anyone who uses a computer or the internet, thanks to a massive CrowdStrike and Microsoft outage. Airlines worldwide are having issues, making it a terrible day to fly anywhere. Now, contactless and digital payment systems like Apple Pay are reportedly having problems, making shoppers unable to pay for their purchases.

While the issue isn’t affecting Apple’s systems, it is bleeding over to Apple users through problems with Apple Pay. Because the processing systems rely on Windows, Apple Pay isn’t working in some places.

There’s no guarantee that Apple Pay and contactless payments won’t work if you go shopping today, though. User reports are scattered across X that supermarkets worldwide cannot process these kinds of payments. Still, the issues don’t appear widespread enough to say it’s happening across the board.

If you plan to take to the streets to get groceries or do any other form of shopping, bringing some cash with you wouldn’t be a bad idea in the event that your cards or digital payments don’t work. We haven’t heard direct reports of Google Pay and other digital wallets not working, but if it’s the processing system causing the issue and not Apple Pay, then we’d expect the same problems to pop up with those.

There’s currently no end in sight for the CrowdStike and Windows problem, though the company said, “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.” How long until that fix gets everything back online remains to be seen.

Regarding the downtime, the company said, “This is not a security incident or cyberattack.” Instead, a software update by the security firm caused all of this chaos. While that’s reassuring for the long haul, it doesn’t make the situation any more pleasant for individuals and businesses dealing with it.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” continues the firm’s statement. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”