The secret sauce of Microsoft’s success is its huge distribution—and many (or say most) corporate IT globally are struggling because of a bad Windows security patch. Needless to say, Microsoft’s outage is affecting other services too — directly or indirectly — including Apple Pay.
To put it a more concise way, Apple Pay terminals around the world were affected earlier today. Many businesses faced issues with basic tasks such as day-to-day sales and other operations including flight management. And what was the root cause behind this? A faulty Windows security patch from CrowdStrike.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” the company issued a statement. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Major airlines like American, Delta, and United had to ground all flights, as a result. Prominent TV channels such as MTV, VH1, CMT, Sky News, and ABC News Australia also went offline.
While it’s unclear why it’s not affecting all users uniformly. However, it seems to be troubling many users globally who are facing issues with supermarkets worldwide using Apple Pay and other NFC/contactless payment agents.