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Reports: NCR blamed by Target for second weekend outage

FILE PHOTO: A computer glitch prompted long lines nationwide for Target customers Saturday afternoon. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Atlanta-based NCR is getting the blame for one of two embarrassing computer failures that hit Target over the weekend.

An NCR data center had problems, leaving the huge retail chain unable to process credit card transactions Sunday, according to Minneapolis-based Target.

"Like many other companies, Target uses NCR as a vendor to help accept payments, and Sunday afternoon NCR experienced an issue at one of their data centers," Target said, in a statement.

Customer information was not at risk, according to Target. “This was not a security-related issue and no payment information was compromised at any time."

NCR officials did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

The outage on Sunday lasted about 90 minutes and apparently did not affect all of Target’s roughly 1,800 stores. An unrelated problem on Saturday had been much more widespread and had lasted about two hours.

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After reports surfaced that Target was blaming NCR, NCR's stock took a hit in early trading, dropping 4%. But the stock rebounded later in the day and was in positive territory by mid-afternoon.

Mobile Payments Today reported that Target officials had told them that NCR technology is used to process payments from its stores.

NCR has three data centers, according to Data Center Dynamics, a web-based news source covering data: Ashburn, Virginia, Westlake, California and Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton was the original home for NCR, which was founded in 1884 as National Cash Register. The company moved to Gwinnett County in 2009, enticed by more than $100 million in state and local incentives.

Less than six years later, the company announced plans to move its headquarters to Atlanta's Midtown.

This report was written by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution