Australia’s federal government held an emergency meeting on Friday evening as a Microsoft outage significantly impacted airports, media houses, supermarkets, banks and transport providers across the country.

Reports have indicated that this is not linked to a cyber attack and is instead a software issue. US-based computer security company CrowdStrike has been linked to the outage which has affected Windows PCs globally.

Prof Salil Kanhere, from the school of computer science and engineering at UNSW Sydney, is reported to have told The Guardian, “The global IT outage appears to have been caused by an issue with the CrowdStrike antivirus software. It appears to have impacted Windows machines with this software installed, causing them to crash (blue screen error) and get stuck in boot loops.”

Supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths across the country reported facing issues with their check-out machines and some of them closed for the day ahead of schedule as a result of it.

However, Woolworths later issued a statement saying that “a small number” of online orders have remained unfulfilled and that all but six of its stores across Australia were now operating.

Melbourne Airport tweeted that passengers departing internationally on Jetstar and Scoot were “experiencing ongoing issues” while Jetstar is “experiencing a significant outage.”

It even led to trains in NSW grinding to a halt. However, trains have now resumed along the Hunter and Southern Highlands lines.

Banks such as Commonwealth Bank confirmed some PayID payment transactions were affected, while customers at ANZ too reported having trouble with some transfers.

“We know some customers have been unable to make PayID payments,” a Commonwealth Bank spokesperson said. “If you are unable to use PayID, you’re still able to make payments between your accounts or pay someone using their BSB and account number.”

Media houses across the country were reporting issues too. Presenters at ABC were believed to be using their phones to read the news after the teleprompters went down, while in Melbourne Nine News journalists were reportedly forced to improvise the start of its 4pm bulletin as problems cropped up with their news packages.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has issued a statement trying to calm fears that the outage could affect essential services across Australia. “I understand Australians are concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services. My Government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator. There is no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or Triple-0 services at this stage,” said the Prime Minister.