A nationwide fault this morning left many shoppers unable to make transactions using ANZ/National Bank credit and direct debit cards.
A technical issue briefly disrupted credit card and eftpos transactions at some merchants, an ANZ spokesman said.
The fault did not affect ATM transactions.
"The issue has been resolved and affected merchants should now be back online," he said.
"We would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience that this has caused."
The problem started about 11.30am and was fixed by 12.14pm.
Eftpos company Eftpos Central tweeted just after midday, advising merchants not to try to process ANZ or National cards until the fault had been rectified.
People around the country quickly took to social media to vent their frustration during the fault.
Restaurant Velvet Burger posted a Facebook status about 11.45am which said: "ANZ has an outage at the moment which is causing the Grababurger issues. The amount of money the banks make, you'd think they'd have it sewn up."
"Eftpos is down in Balclutha and apparently wider Otago. Anyone know why? #cantbuylunch," said Twitter user Laura Roozendaal.
- Ben Chapman-Smith of nzherald.co.nz