Sainsbury’s unable to take contactless payments and cancels all Saturday deliveries

An “error” in an overnight software update has left Sainsbury’s unable to deliver food or take contactless payments at its stores.

The supermarket chain cancelled all home deliveries that were scheduled for Saturday and told customers to rebook for Sunday or later on next week.

In stores, customers reported being unable to pay using contactless cards and a number said tills were only able to take cash payments.

“Due to an error with an overnight software update, we are experiencing issues with contactless payments,” a Sainsbury’s spokesperson said.

The issues at Sainsbury’s come a day after McDonalds customers were left unable to place orders because of IT outages caused by a “third-party configuration change”.

But one cybersecurity expert told The Telegraph that the two incidents do not appear to be connected.

Cash only

The chain said all of its shops would remain open on Saturday but warned customers that they would have to pay using “chip and pin and cash”.

It also confirmed that it had been left unable to directly contact customers who had been expecting a home delivery.

“We apologise to customers for the inconvenience and are working hard to fix the issue,” the spokesperson added.

On X, formerly Twitter, disgruntled customers were advised that “no orders will be going out today”.

A number said they had been unable to get through to support on the telephone because customer service had not picked up their calls.

Iain Sankey, a retired teacher, said the Sainsbury’s superstore in East Dulwich, south London, was only taking cash and had no staffed tills open on Saturday morning.

“When I arrived an employee was standing outside the entrance warning customers that the internet was down and that there was no Smart Shop and that they could only take cash,” the 65-year-old told The Telegraph.

“I found it hard to believe that under the circumstances the managers had allocated no one to the tills. There was not a manager to be seen anywhere.”

Amanda Evans, from Redhill, Surrey, said the town’s branch was only taking cash when she visited and that all Nectar card discounts were unavailable.

“I bought a car parking ticket for £3 and decided to go ahead with my shop and pay using cash,” the 62-year-old personal assistant said.

“But when I was told there was no Nectar and I would have to pay full price for everything, I decided against it and asked for a parking refund – only to be told I needed to spend £10 in-store to get one.

“They also said they didn’t have any up to date information from head office and we should contact them ourselves.”

Alan Woodhouse added that the Sainsbury’s Local in West Hendon, north London, was “only taking cash”.

“That’s technology for you,” he said.

Sister stores unaffected

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said deliveries from Argos and Habitat, which it owns, were unaffected.

But some Argos stores located within Sainsbury’s supermarkets were forced to close on Saturday because of “technical issues”, according to signs posted on their doors by managers.

The Telegraph also understands that Britain’s cybersecurity authorities are not investigating the Sainsbury’s outages as a potential cyber attack or hacking incident.

Alan Curran, a cybersecurity expert and former police officer, said they appear unrelated to the IT meltdown at McDonald’s on Friday.

“It is strange to see two large outages happen to two large organisations so close together, but they do appear unrelated based on the limited information that has been disclosed,” he said.

“McDonald’s said they were affected by a ‘third-party configuration change’ whereas Sainsbury’s has said their outage was caused by a ‘software update’.

“That could either mean they’ve updated their underlying infrastructure which has caused their application-level, customer-facing software to fail, or it could mean their application-level software was updated by developers which caused some issues.”

The Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We’re experiencing technical issues affecting some stores, our Groceries Online service and our ability to contact customers.

“Unfortunately, we will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today’s Groceries Online deliveries.”

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