Westpac, ANZ payment problems anger customers during Boxing Day chaos

Furious customers stranded in shops say they are unable to pay for their goods. Photo / 123RF

Angry customers and business owners are taking aim at Westpac and ANZ, saying its payment system has dropped out on one of the year's busiest shopping days.

Customers are being stranded inside shops with no means to pay for their Boxing Day sale finds or being forced to pay with cash.

Outage-checking website Down Detector shows there has been a sudden surge in customers reporting problems accessing the payment system from about midday today.

The same website shows the ANZ App has crashed on one of the busiest days of the year for banking transactions — with customers unable to access their funds.

Down Detector shows hundreds of customers reported problems with the app at around 10am this morning.

Furious customers hit out at the outages on sociale media.

"Westpac's payment processing is down. No ETA on restoration. Phone dude told me to try again in an hour," wrote one disgruntled customer on social media.

"What is happening with Westpac!!! We have a grocery store and none of our eftpos is working customers are leaving!" wrote a business owner.

One shopper tweeted to Westpac saying all its systems were down and customers were being asked to pay cash instead of card.

"We are currently aware of the issue and our team is working to get this resolved ASAP," a spokesman for the bank responded on Twitter.

A Westpac spokeswoman told news.com.au the problem is now under control and all systems should be back to normal.

She said the outage lasted one hour — from 11.59am to 12.58pm (AEST).

"We want to sincerely apologise to customers," she said. "It's a terrible day for this to happen."

ANZ has also copped hammering on social media.

"App still not working. Makes it hard to shop for the sales," wrote one customer.

"Just tried to log in to the app but it won't recognise my fingerprint or my pin code," wrote another.

One customer told 3AW his app shows an error message which reads: "Something went wrong, please try again later".

"I waited about 20 minutes on the phone and they said it's down nation-wide," Jan said.

"They don't know when it's going to be back up and running."

Both crashes come as more than half of Australia expected to be on the hunt for sales today — causing roads in major cities to become gridlocked.

December 26 is still the nation's supreme shopping event, despite November's Black Friday and Cyber Monday offering large discounts.

News.com.au has approached ANZ for comment.