Wawa’s credit card processing system was down at potentially all of its convenience stores for over two hours Thursday morning, representatives from the company confirmed to NBC10 Philadelphia.
Wawa told the news outlet that it experienced a chain-wide credit and debit card processing outage “that impacted most if not all of our stores” on Thursday. The issue occurred between 7:15 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and has since been resolved, the company said.
The c-store retailer told NBC10 that it only accepted cash payments during the outage. Wawa didn’t share an exact number of stores impacted.
It’s unclear what caused the processing outage, which “appears to have impacted other retailers in addition to Wawa,” the spokesperson told NBC10.
"We do not have details on the cause at this time,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson from Wawa did not respond by press time to comment on the situation.
Wawa is no stranger to issues with its credit card systems. Back in 2019, hackers breached the c-store retailer’s point-of-sale systems and installed malware on its payment terminals and fuel dispensers, allowing them to steal credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates and cardholder names from nearly all of Wawa’s locations for nine months. The breach hit at least 30 million credit cards issued by about 5,000 financial institutions.
Wawa spent years paying out negligence claims stemming from the credit card data breach. Those claims reached nearly $50 million as of last year.
Wawa, which is in the midst of a major expansion, operates over 1,000 convenience stores across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Washington, D.C.
