Chick-fil-A customers across the US faced chaos - and free chicken - when the chain's payments system crashed

• Chick-fil-A was unable to process payments for about an hour on Friday.
• The outage was tied to the chain's third-party payment system.
• Many Chick-fil-A customers ended up getting free food when they were unable to pay.

Many Chick-fil-A customers faced an unexpected disruption on Friday.

A representative for Chick-fil-A confirmed to Insider that the chain's third-party payment vendor experienced an outage on Friday across many businesses that it serves. For about an hour, Chick-fil-A restaurants' payment systems were unable to process payments.

The problem has been resolved, and restaurants were once again processing payments as normal as of 1:45 p.m. ET on Friday, the representative said.

But for some customers, there was a silver lining. Many Chick-fil-A restaurants started handing out free meals during the outage.

—Ladd McConkey (@wyermush) February 26, 2021

—Adam Guillette (@adamguillette) February 26, 2021

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Chick-fil-A has some of the longest drive-thru lines in fast food because of its immense popularity. The lengthy lines can create inconveniences even without an outage creating confusion.

Insider recently reported that Chick-fil-A was facing three separate lawsuits from local businesses that alleged the chain's drive-thru lines were causing problems. The chain is working to speed up drive-thru lines by having workers take orders on iPads, rolling out new drive-thru designs, and opening more restaurants.