Paypal Services Return After Global Outage, User Complaints Flood Twitter

Online payments service Paypal Holdings Inc. said it had resolved a major breakdown Friday caused by a power outage at a data center, after users and online merchants took to Twitter saying they were unable to make Internet sales.

The company posted a statement on Twitter saying that its services were back up. Paypal had tweeted two hours earlier, acknowledging the outage.

Downdetector.com, a website which reports disruptions in online services showed a sharp spike in issues faced by Paypal users after 9:57 p.m. EDT. A majority of these users were unable to log in or make payments. About 23 percent complained that the website did not load.

Online retailer Etsy, which had temporarily disabled its payment option with Paypal following the outage, said at 12:42 a.m. EDT that Paypal appeared to have resolved the issue. Hundreds of businesses had asked prospective buyers to hold off on purchases the situation was resolved.

It has been a tough couple of days for Paypal, which reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter revenue Wednesday, pushing its shares down 5.6 percent during after-hours trading. The company’s shares somewhat recovered Thursday.