Afterpay is currently grappling with a widespread outage that has disrupted services for millions of users trying to make payments.

The problem, which began around 2 PM AEDT, has impacted the app, consumer and merchant portals, online and in-store transactions, as well as the shop directory.

This outage is affecting users across Australia, New Zealand, North America, and Canada.

“We are experiencing an outage at the moment that is affecting services,” stated an Afterpay spokesperson.

“Our team is working diligently to resolve this issue as soon as possible, and we’ll provide another update shortly.”

Investigations into the cause are ongoing. 

Afterpay is a popular buy now, pay later service that lets customers purchase items immediately and pay them off in four interest-free instalments. 

It has about 3.5 million customers in Australia and more than 24 million users worldwide.