THOUSANDS of ANZ customers were locked out of their online accounts and the bank's mobile app today.
Frustrated customers were unable to use their credit and debit cards or withdraw money from ATMs.
Many expressed their anger online with some saying they “cannot pay rent or payroll”.
One wrote: "It’s Friday afternoon and our internet banking and app are not working? We have workers and bills to pay!"
The nationwide outage comes ahead of a long weekend as Monday October 2, Territory Day, is a state holiday in Australia.
Customers began reporting the issues around midday on Friday.
READ MORE ON MONEY
Website DownDetector, which tracks outages, reported about 8,000 customers having issues.
One woman, Nicole Spaccavento, said she was shopping when her card was declined at the till despite having enough money in the account.
She said: "I tried to log in to the app and it wouldn’t load so I called my husband to see if he could, to no avail.
"Had to leave my shopping and go to the branch and was told all systems down nationwide."
Most read in Money
Someone else slammed the outage as "appalling" as they worried about paying their employees.
He said: "What am I supposed to tell people, sorry I can’t pay you today?
"It’s a public holiday on Monday so people can’t get paid till Tuesday. I’d drive into my local branch but they are only open till 1pm.
"They don’t have the sense to post something on their website – this is nothing short of appalling."
ANZ said it was aware of an issue "impacting App, Internet Banking, Credit/Debit Card transactions, ATM and Branch services".
A spokesman for the bank said: "A team of experts is working to resolve this as quickly as possible.
“We apologise for any disruption and inconvenience this is causing and want to reassure customers it is our absolute priority to resolve this.”
ANZ, one of Australia's major four banks, provides banking services to over 8.5 million customers.
Around the same time, people shopping at Woolworths stores in Victoria, NSW and the ACT were unable to pay using their credit or debit cards.
Between 10 and 20 of the popular shops had to take cash only when their systems crashed.
Branches in Sydney's south and west, Mawson in the ACT, Pakenham in Melbourne and Stafford in Brisbane were all affected.
Read More on The US Sun
A spokesperson told 9news.com.au: "We'd like to thank customers for their patience with an IT outage affecting eftpos in a small number of stores.
"Stores remained open with cash still being able to be used."
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEZqqupl6YvK57zKilnrFfbn9xhJByaWiZnq96o63NpKCnn12ZvLi6jKaYo6eiYry2wMCgnGaclZe2tXnCq5ydoaRirqSvxKyqaA%3D%3D