UPDATE: Service has been restored to PayPal users, the company tweeted out shortly before 1 a.m. ET. The outage was caused by a data center power outage.
Following a temporary service interruption customers can once again pay with PayPal.
— PayPal (@PayPal) October 30, 2015
PayPal, the online payment company, experienced an hours-long service outage around the world overnight.
The company addressed the lapse on Twitter Thursday night, while hundreds of users complained their payments wouldn't go through. Some business owners claimed they had lost sales because of the outage.
We are aware of an interruption in our service which is preventing some of our customers from being able to pay with PayPal.
— PayPal (@PayPal) October 30, 2015
We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working to restore service as quickly as possible.
— PayPal (@PayPal) October 30, 2015
Website monitoring company Down Right Now showed PayPal's service had been disrupted for more than two hours. Downdetector.com showed service problems from the United States through parts of Europe, and up and down Australia.
PayPal processes about 12.5 million payments every day and has more than 173 million active accounts, according the company's website. The company was spun off from eBay earlier this year and went public for the second time.
Credit: downrightnow.com
Several PayPal users complained about the inability to sell products, or buy them. The company sent out an email to users encouraging them to check the status of pending orders to make sure they had gone through.
Other sites, including Etsy, have halted the use of PayPal as a payment method for orders.