Nationwide Optus outage impacts Geraldton businesses’ ability to process Eftpos payments

Businesses across Geraldton lost sales and suffered hours of chaos during Optus’ nationwide outage, which started at 1am on Wednesday. Some Eftpos machines linked to the provider were unable to connect to the internet on Wednesday morning when store owners were setting up shop for the day, but most were back online by midday. The outage affected up to 10 million customers and 400,000 businesses across Australia. City Health Geraldton, a multidisciplinary medical centre on Durlacher Street, had its Eftpos machines down until 11am, and had to request customers pay with cash or over the phone at a later time. Owner of Fiori on Marine Terrace, Catherine Boys, had been unable to start her Eftpos machine, which allows her to take payments via card. Ms Boys’ Eftpos machine was still not online at 11.30am and had been taking cash as an alternative payment method. “I think I’ve lost about four sales because of it. But it’s lucky we’re having a quiet day because otherwise it would be a lot more,” she said. Owner of Intersport on Marine Terrace, Adam Rowe, had one of two Eftpos machines out of action from the time the shop opened at 8.30am, and the machine only came back online at 11.40am. Mr Rowe said the store had lost one sale from the outage, while the shop was trying to figure out what had happened to the machine. Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told Sydney radio station 2GB on Wednesday it remained unclear what had caused the outage. She had previously said it was highly unlikely to be due to a hack. “We don’t have line of sight into the root cause. Our main priority has been on restoring service to customers,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin said. Sonja Tennberg, owner of Corner Surf Shop, said the store had lost one of its Eftpos machines but the other device still worked. “We didn’t lose too much, we have alternative methods to pay so that’s always a good backup for when this sort of thing happens.” she said. Abby Kreusch, a front of house staff member at Casa Dolce, said the Marine Terrace cafe’s work phone was connected to Optus and had not been able to make or receive calls all morning. “Usually we have people calling ahead to order their coffees in the morning, which helps with the wait times and making sure there isn’t a backlog of coffees to make,” she said. Staff at Roma on Marine Terrace said some customers had had difficulties with online banking, and using digital Eftpos cards but their machines had been fine. Ms Bayer Rosmarin has also said the company was looking at providing compensation to “thank customers for their patience”. The outage has also affected other companies using the Optus network, including Aussie Broadband, Amaysim, CatchConnect, Coles Mobile, Dodo and Moose Mobile. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Government would do everything in its power to assist Optus and called for transparency from the telecommunications giant. She said the outage seemed to be caused by a fundamental fault in the network.