Thousands of ANZ credit card machines 'stopped working after glitch'

A technical glitch resulted in thousands of ANZ credit card and Eftpos machines failing to work.

Thousands of ANZ credit card and Eftpos machines stopped working after a technical glitch, according to reports.

Transactions were unable to be processed when using the affected devices on Tuesday (August 24th), the Australian Associated Press reports.

Stephen Ries, a spokesman for the bank - which provides ANZ credit cards - said there was a "system outage" which affected a "high percentage" of machines across the nation.

Moreover, the problem occurred for around three hours, from approximately 11am until 2pm local time.

But ANZ branches were not affected and were encouraged to be used in the mean-time, with Mr Ries adding: "We apologise to customers for the inconvenience we have caused today."

This news comes after the organisation announced its market update for nine months to June 2010 earlier this week, which revealed that Aussie credit quality at the firm continued to improve and it made a pre-tax profit of approximately $3.6 billion.

By Emma North