Mastercard faced a service disruption across Australia on Saturday, August 16, 2026. A scheduled system update caused nationwide transaction declines. The outage affected payments and mobile banking. By mid-afternoon Sydney time, more than 1,900 problems were reported. The disruption occurred at the start of Saturday trade.
Mastercard confirmed a planned update caused the issue. The company stated it was not a system failure or external attack. Mastercard later announced the problem was resolved. All systems were functioning normally. Commonwealth Bank notified customers about payment failures during the outage.