Spark restores South Island Eftpos after second Paymark fix
Spark said on Monday 2 November 2026 that a connectivity fault which disrupted Spark-connected Eftpos for South Island businesses is resolved, after Paymark put a second repair in place that afternoon.
Spark has confirmed that card payment failures hitting a number of South Island businesses are over, RNZ reported on Monday 2 November 2026. Supermarkets, pharmacies and Invercargill City Council facilities were among those caught up in the disruption on Monday. While the Spark-connected service was down, some merchants could only take cash or bank transfers.
Paymark, the electronic payments provider, said it had pinned down the cause and applied a fix on Monday afternoon. A repair made some hours earlier had not solved the fault, because Paymark kept getting reports of connection trouble from Spark-connected Eftpos users and said it was looking into a "widespread connectivity issue". Spark later said the fault was resolved.
Earlier in the day Spark had apologised for the disruption and said it was working closely with Paymark to find the cause. At that point it described the impact as limited to some terminals in Invercargill and Dunedin. FreshChoice confirmed that about 12 of its South Island stores were affected, with some contactless transactions failing.
Eftpos New Zealand said customers who connect through its own network were not affected.