Londoners face delays getting ‘Greggs morning fix’ as bakery chain faces IT issues

Greggs stores in London and the rest of the UK were hit by a wave of IT issues today (March 20) affecting card payments. 

The bakery chain revealed it had faced problems with payments across its 2,450 shops up and down the country this morning as it assured customers it was looking to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Greggs have since confirmed that the majority of its shops that were affected by IT issues should now be able to take both card and cash payments again.

While some capital-based Greggs locations appeared to be functioning normally this morning, others only accepted cash payments or click-and-collect orders.

When London World visited the sausage roll retailer’s location near Cannon Street Station, it found the store had restricted ordering and only accepted transactions through the Greggs’ app.

A Greggs employee at the store explained that a problem with the tills meant payments by card or cash could not be accepted.

The Eastcheap Greggs on the other hand appeared to be operating as normal and was still  taking card payments.

Londoner Lena, who had stopped by the Cannon Street Station store before work said the IT issue had added time to her usual commute. She explained: “We could have been to work a little earlier than usual, but because of the whole ordering system, it’s taken us a while.”

Joe, who works by St Paul’s added: “It’s taken a bit longer to get my usual morning fix.”

Greggs’ recent payment issues follows similar card payment outages at both Sainsbury’s and Tesco on Saturday and McDonald’s last Friday.

An overnight software update meant Sainsbury's was temporarily unable to fulfil online grocery deliveries or take contactless payments.

Tesco experienced unrelated technical issues which caused the supermarket to cancel some orders.

Meanwhile, McDonald's said a third-party provider caused outages affecting stores internationally, stressing that a cyber-attack was not responsible.