Pedestrians walk past a McDonald’s Corp. restaurant in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, Japan, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020.
Noriko Hayashi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
McDonald’s said Friday that a technology disruption disrupted operations at many of its stores around the world, including Japan and Australia, but ruled out the possibility of a cybersecurity incident.
Many McDonald’s stores in Japan have stopped accepting orders from customers in person and on mobile devices due to the system outage, a spokesperson for McDonald’s Holdings Company Japan said, adding that the company is working to restore operations soon.
“We are aware of a technology outage that has impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved,” McDonald’s said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for McDonald’s Australia confirmed the outage was impacting its restaurants nationwide.
The outage also appears to have impacted customers in Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK, with people taking to social media to complain about disruptions in stores.
The fast food chain has approximately 40,000 restaurants worldwide, with more than 14,000 stores in the United States. It operates nearly 3,000 stores across Japan and about 1,000 in Australia, its websites for the regions show.
The New York Times said McDonald’s Hong Kong was experiencing a “computer system failure,” saying mobile ordering and self-ordering kiosks were not working.