Payment system update glitch hits Starbucks stores in US and Canada

Some Starbucks customers had to go without their morning cups of coffee after an overnight software update on Tuesday knocked out payment systems at an undisclosed number of locations across the US and Canada. The outage left the affected stores unable to accept any payments - cash or credit. With the system offline, some stores gave away free coffee, till the stores' payment outages were fixed by Tuesday afternoon, according to a Starbucks spokeswoman.

"Overnight we worked to install a technology update to our store registers in the US and Canada, and a limited number of locations were temporarily offline," Starbucks spokeswoman Madeleine Lowenborg-Frick said in an email. "The stores remained open during this time, and we can now confirm virtually all are once again fully operational, with the remaining few stores scheduled to come back online shortly."

She did not say how many of the 13,532 US and 1,429 Canadian stores experienced the outage.

"At Starbucks we always strive to create the best moment in every customer's day," Lowenborg-Frick said. "Providing our customers with free beverages aligns with our mission and values."

"As part of our normal course of business, overnight we worked to install a technology update to our store registers in the US and Canada," the company said in a statement.

"A limited number of locations remain offline, and we are working swiftly to resume full operations in each of these stores," Starbucks added. "The stores will remain open during this time and, as always, our partners are prepared to take care of our customers to ensure they have the best experience possible."

Starbucks had also been hit by an outage in 2015 that prompted stores to close early, which was blamed by the company on an ''internal failure during a daily system refresh.''