New Zealand businesses have been left struggling to make payments and provide some services after a major outage with Amazon’s cloud computing platform.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) was hit by the widespread service outage overnight, which has disrupted some of the world’s biggest internet-based apps, websites and retailers.

Sky TV and TVNZ+ are among those affected as well as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Google, Zoom and online video game platform Fortnite.

One New Zealand small business, which uses global accounting software platform Xero, told the Herald it couldn’t access bank reconciliation, set up invoices or check inventory this morning.

“It just disrupts your day,” Doug Graham, technical director at premium coffee beans and equipment company The Bean Machine said.

“For example bank feeds have not occurred and reconciliation of accounts isn’t possible. The 20th of the month is still a big day for credit and debit processing… the transactions will have gone through the banks but this isn’t available in Xero.”

Graham said he hoped PAYE had gone through to Inland Revenue, which was done yesterday.

“It’s mostly uncertainty,” he said.

“If it goes on another day then it will be a real pain.”

He said the company did not receive communication from Xero about an issue until 11.30am today.

“[Xero] would have known fairly early that there was an issue but notification from Xero was pretty late. We had to work it out ourselves.

“There was no notification on the Xero app.”

A spokesperson for Xero said some customers were experiencing slowness and issues logging on.

“AWS is a Xero third-party provider and is working to rectify with urgency.

“Some customers can successfully login to Xero and we are monitoring. We thank customers for their patience.”

In an update, Amazon said AWS programs have “returned to normal operations”, bringing an end to the 15-hour long outage, BBC reported.

Amazon said final technical problems have been fixed and a full rundown detailing the cause and scope of the outage would be provided later.