Telstra outage downs TransLink payment system for seven hours

Queensland commuters were unable to pay for tickets using debit or credit cards for almost seven hours yesterday after a Telstra outage downed TransLink's EFTPOS payment system. 

The issue affected all ticketing machines and Queensland Rail offices across the South East Queensland public transport network.

The public transport operator alerted customers to the issue through its social media channels just after 9am on Wednesday.

A TransLink spokesperson confirmed the issue was the result of a Telstra outage, which had been identified at 4.45am and was only resolved just before 11.30am - leaving the EFTPOS network out of action for almost seven hours. 

Customers were still able to purchase and top-up Go cards or buy paper tickets with cash at ticketing machines and offices, or via debit or credit card over the phone and online.

The Go card’s auto top-up service, which occurs when a card falls below $5, was similarly unaffected by the communications outage.

A Telstra spokesperson said the outage was the result of updates to the system behind the payments service.

“Telstra implemented a change overnight in order to move the service we provide to TransLink onto a new system,” the spokesperson said.

“We believe our customers’ EFTPOS devices were unable to accept this update and we’re investigating why this was the case.

“All services were restored by early afternoon. We apologise to anyone who was inconvenienced by the disruption.”

TransLink is preparing to overhaul the current Go card electronic ticketing system to allow commuters to use debit and credit cards, smartphones and wearables, and is tipped to trial the replacement before the end of 2018 or early next year.