Dunedin businesses were hampered by eftpos issues that caused problems around the country last night.
The Bog front-of-house staff member Callum Stuart said its machines were "temperamental'' for about 45 minutes from 9.30pm.
Eventually, transactions were going through, he said.
A spokesman for Alibi Bar and Restaurant in the Octagon said eftpos had been "on and off'' since about 8.30pm, but it did not affect the business too much as it was not busy during that period.
Some businesses, including Rialto Cinemas, were still able to use eftpos, but only offline and customers were having to sign receipts.
Long queues were reported at Centre City New World, as only cash could be used to pay for groceries.
Problems were also reported at Z petrol station in Andersons Bay and at Mobil in Cumberland St.
On social media, people complained of eftpos issues in Northland, Auckland, Tauranga, Taranaki, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch.
Paresh Jesani said he was at McDonald's at Auckland Airport when the eftpos went down.
"I tried four times but still couldn't use it and then the service woman said that ‘I will just give you what you wanted and don't worry about paying', therefore I got free stuff today.''
Paymark spokesman Paul Brislen said he did not know what had caused the outage and it was tough to tell how widespread the problem was as Paymark ran two data centres to process eftpos transactions.
"There's no way of knowing how many were affected. It certainly wasn't a blanket thing.
"It seems to be ... stable [now] and all transactions are being processed as you would hope.''
- rhys.chamberlain@odt.co.nz and additonal reporting NZME
