It's taken hours but telco giant Telstra has managed to put most bank and retail customers caught out at ATMs and checkouts back online after an outage.
The outage had affected some EFTPOS terminals and access to ATMs across the country on Thursday afternoon.
"Most customer services have now been restored, and we're working with our customers on the remaining few," a Telstra spokesman said on Thursday night.
"We are continuing to monitor all services as this happens. We're sorry for the impact and inconvenience caused."
Commonwealth Bank experienced problems with some of its merchant payment terminals, leaving some retailers unable to accept card payments.
"Some services are returning to normal and we thank customers for their patience. Our telecommunication provider continues to work to resolve their incident that is impacting our services," the CBA tweeted.
Customers had complained to CBA via social media that their EFTPOS machines were displaying error messages.
The outage also hit Australia Post, St George Bank, NAB, Westpac and ANZ.
"All EFTPOS transactions, bill payments and banking services are back up and running. Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding," the postal service tweeted.
NAB's woes were among those first fixed during the outage, a spokeswoman told AAP.
Westpac said some branches, ATMs and services in Sydney were non-operational due to a broader network failure in the region.
The outage also affected Caltex service stations, Coles and Woolworths stores, Big W and liquor retailers BWS and Dan Murphy's.
"Telstra has advised us the network connection is back up and running," Woolworths told AAP, offering an apology to customers for the delay.
"We expect our systems to come back online and resume normal service through checkouts over the next hour.
"Stores are continuing to trade as our teams are still able to process payments manually at this time. We're working closely with Telstra to rectify the issue as quickly as possible."
Coles stores had continued to trade as normal despite a small number of credit union cards impacted by the outage, a spokesman said.
BANKS AND COMPANIES AMONG THOSE HIT BY TELSTRA OUTAGE:
* Commonwealth Bank
* Westpac
* ANZ
* NAB
* St George Bank
* Australia Post
* Woolworths
* Coles
* Caltex
* Big W
* Dan Murphy's
* BWS
