Marks & Spencer has apologised to customers after a “cyber incident” affected contactless payments and the pick up of online orders in it stores in recent days.
The retailer told shoppers that delays to click and collect orders currently continued but it was “working hard to resolve” the issue.
It told customers and staff they did not need to take any action, suggesting their data has not been accessed.
In a statement to the stock exchange it said it had found it “necessary to make some minor, temporary changes to our store operations to protect customers and the business” and was “sorry for any inconvenience experienced”. It said stores remained open and its website and app were operating as normal.
“Customer trust is incredibly important to us, and if the situation changes an update will be provided as appropriate,” the company said in a statement to the City.
M&S said it had reported the incident to the National Cyber Security Centre and hired cybersecurity experts to help investigate and manage the issue and was “taking actions to further protect our network” to ensure it could continue serving shoppers.
The incident began on Monday with contactless payments and click and collect orders affected in stores across the country. However, there was a separate technical problem on Saturday, which only affected contactless payments.
A shopper at the retailer’s Plymouth store posted on X on Saturday “could not collect my online purchase today, previous visit could not return an item as tills were down …please sort out your poor IT situation”.
Another customer posted on the same platform on Monday: “Nothing working Beckenham [in] London either, no pick ups or returns.”
