Convenience store customers were urged to have cash ready as customers experienced problems paying using chip and pin machines.

The East of England Co-op took to Twitter this morning to explain staff would only be able to accept cash while they worked to fix the problem, which was affecting some stores.

“We’re only able to accept cash at the moment, due to a problem with our chip and pin machines,” said the company on Twitter.

“We are working really hard to get this sorted as soon as we can and are sorry for any inconvenience.”

Shoppers took to social media to express their disdain at the lack of cashless options in store over the past few days.

One shopper reported said that there had been “chaos” in the Framlingham branch of the store on Tuesday afternoon evening, while customer Kirsty Old said that she wish she had known about the problems before visiting her local branch.

Roger Grosvenor, joint chief executive for the East of England Co-op, said: “Like many other retailers, we are currently experiencing issues with taking card payments at a number of our food stores across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

“We are sorry for the inconvenience caused and thank our customers for their patience and understanding.

“We are working closely with the provider to implement a fix to resolve this issue and will update our customers as soon as we are able to do so.”

The issue is believed to have begun on Tuesday and has affected a number of other major retailers.

Marks and Spencer customers across the country faced similar issues on Tuesday, with some stores having to put up signs to tell customers they were unable to accept anything but cash.