On Tuesday afternoon, customers looking to shop at retail giant Target's stores and on its website were briefly met with an outage, preventing purchases.
At some stores, there were payment processing issues. On the Target.com homepage, a message greeted customers: "We're sorry! This page is currently unavailable. Please try again later." Target's mobile application also did not load.
Around 5 p.m. Tuesday, systems seemed to be back to normal.
"As the result of a payment processing issue, some Target guests were temporarily unable to make purchases at Target stores and at Target.com," a company spokesman told CNBC in an email. "Within an hour, our technology teams identified and began to remedy the issue to limit the impact on our guests. This was not a security-related issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate our guests' patience."
The outage was one of several hiccups Target has had with its systems this year.
In June, registers were down for nearly two hours on a Saturday, leaving customers unable to check out. The company later said it was a result of "an internal technology issue." The issues continued into Sunday, as customers reported not being able to use the card readers. Shares fell nearly 2% after the incident, and one retail industry executive said the company could have lost as much as $100 million in sales that weekend.
Some customers complained on social media Tuesday of not being able to use the website or the mobile application.
One customer lamented having Target withdrawal.
According to outage website Down Detector, reports of an outage affected major metropolitan areas including Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and New York.
According to an August filing, 7.3% of Target's sales are digitally originated. Shares of the company have risen 62.6% since the beginning of the year. Target has a market value of $54.9 billion.