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Target's big failure in 2019 continued at a smaller scale on Sunday, with some buyers stating that some stores were not able to process credit card purchases.

The failure of about two hours that affected about all Target stores on Saturday was caused by a mistake made during the maintenance of the system, confirmed Target spokeswoman Jenna Reck at USA TODAY.

Sunday's problem was unrelated, due to a problem at the NCR provider, said Target in a statement. This was not widespread as Saturday.

"Although this is not a problem in Target's technology system, Target has not been able to process card payments in some stores for around 90 minutes," said Target's statement. "The problem is now solved and payments are being made normally."

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Social media reported that some stores could only process their payments with cash or checks, but there were fewer complaints than Saturday's shutdown, which contained more than 5,000 reports on Downdetector. com.

"Although it was not related to Saturday's problem, we know that many customers have had a frustrating shopping experience in our stores this weekend. For that, we are really sorry, "said Target in his statement. "We never want to disappoint guests and we work tirelessly to prevent these problems from happening again."

As for Saturday's incident, Target said, "This is not a security issue and no payment information has been compromised at any time." Saturday's statement also confirmed that the breakdown was "not a data breach".

Regular maintenance

Eric Schmidt, head of IT security at Butler University in Indianapolis, was not surprised to learn that the failure was related to maintenance.

"Weekends are a normal maintenance period for most computer stores," Schmidt said. "The retail business is different, especially with stores open seven days a week."

Sometimes, said Schmidt, even a simple upgrade does not go as planned.

"It's one of those things that's happening, unfortunately," he said.

The last widespread Target outage for registries occurred on June 15, 2014, exactly five years after Saturday's edition day. Reck said the 2014 outage was related to a network problem.

Target.com and other Target systems have not been affected by Saturday's crash, Reck confirmed.

During the 2013 holiday shopping season, Target was the victim of a serious data breach that affected more than 100 million customers.

Follow Kelly Tyko, USA TODAY reporter, on Twitter: @KellyTyko

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