McDonald's said on Friday a technology outage had disrupted operations at many of its outlets worldwide, including Japan and Australia, but ruled out the possibility of a cybersecurity incident.
Many McDonald's stores in Japan stopped taking in-person and mobile customer orders because of the system disruption, a spokesperson at McDonald's Holdings Company Japan said, adding that the company was working to restore operations soon.
"We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," McDonald's said in a statement.
China was also affected for several hours, with the outage a hot topic on social media platform Weibo, but the firm later said its online ordering system had been fully restored.
McDonald's in Hong Kong wrote on Facebook that its "mobile ordering and self-ordering kiosks are not functioning" but later said its system was "gradually returning to normal".
Singapore was also hit, as were Australia and New Zealand according to media reports.
India, Indonesia and Thailand were unaffected.
The fast food chain has about 40,000 restaurants worldwide, with more than 14,000 stores in the United States. It operates nearly 3,000 stores across Japan and roughly 1,000 in Australia, its websites for the regions show.
