'Most' Macca's restaurants in Australia re-open after major global ...

McDonald's restaurants across Australia have begun to re-open after systems were impacted across the country as well as in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK.

The company shared a short statement on social media around 10.45pm saying the outage had been largely resolved.

"Most restaurants have now re-opened and are serving up all your faves," a spokesperson said.

"A huge thank you to our customers and our hard-working crew for their patience, we're sorry for the inconvenience."

The issue began about 4.30pm, with the fast food giant confirming tonight it was "not related to a cybersecurity event". The exact cause was still not known.

Many outlets across Australia were unable to take payments or orders, and about 8.30pm, many were still experiencing issues.

Earlier, 9news.com.au was able to confirm many stores unable to serve customers, including at Bondi Junction and Sylvania in Sydney, as well as in Melbourne and Perth.

At Kingsford McDonald's in Sydney, one customer told 9news.com.au: "An employee asked everyone to pay at the counter.

"She's telling people who are trying to use the machine that the systems are down so they won't be able to see their orders come through."

The outage appeared to be affecting point of sale systems, as well as the systems used within the store to transmit orders.

One McDonald's worker in Sydney who spoke to 9news.com.au confirmed that their screens had shut down and staff at the restaurant were taking orders in cash.

Staff at the Stanmore location said they were writing orders down on paper.

Another store in Bondi Junction reported at 6.50pm that their systems were working again, but other stores were still down.

By 7pm some stores in Melbourne and Sydney reported that their point of sale systems were functioning, with only the internal screens unable to display information.

Stores in Japan and New Zealand were also reported to be affected by a technology issue.

Media outlets in the Netherlands reported that branches there were also closed.

There have also been reports of outages in the UK and the US.

In an update about 9pm, McDonald's said the issue was "being resolved".

"We thank customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event.

"We can confirm some restaurants are back online and serving customers, and we are continuing to work to restore all remaining restaurants as soon as possible."

Earlier it had described the incident as "a technology outage".

Downdetector, an outage tracker, also reported a spike in problems with the McDonald's app.

Some McDonald's restaurants internationally were operating normally again after the outage, with people ordering and getting their food at locations in Bangkok, Milan and London.

A worker at a restaurant in Bangkok said the system was down for about an hour, making it impossible to take online or credit card payments but allowing it to still accept cash for orders.

At another location in Thailand's capital, there was plywood over a door with a sign saying, "Technicians are updating the system," even as customers were ordering again and paying digitally.

A worker at a Milan restaurant noted that the system was offline for a couple of hours and a technician walked them through getting it back up and running.

A spokesperson for McDonald's in Denmark said the "technology failure" was resolved there and its restaurants were open.

Patrik Hjelte, the owner of several McDonald's restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning: "All McDonald's restaurants are connected to a global network and that is what's messed up".