Octopus services for Android users in outage over five hours

Octopus, the most widely used payment method in Hong Kong, is seeing its online Android service crashing down today and remaining unavailable for more than five hours.

Individuals and merchants with the Octopus app of Android can not use it for transactions, nor could the app function for topping up the amount of physical Octopus cards.

Citizens found the outage started at around 7am and occurred with only the Android version app. Other versions of apps, such as iOS, were not affected.

"I was just using Octopus to pay for the car parking fare," one user commented under the announcement post, "and now I'm stuck as unable to use the app."

A restaurant owner surnamed Lam said the first customer who arrived around 7am failed to pay with his Octopus app.

"I may lose 30 percent of my income today," Lam said in frustration.

"Our online services are currently unavailable," said Octopus Card Limited in an announcement posted on its Facebook page at 10.15 am. "Most transport and retail payments are not affected. Customers can also top up by cash if needed."

The Octopus services for the Android user still have yet to resume by noon on Sunday.