Tens of thousands of WhatsApp users around the world reported difficulty in sending and receiving messages on Tuesday, prompting the  app to go trending on Twitter under the hashtag #WhatsAppIsDown

From around 8.30pm UK time, a huge surge of complaints were registered on Downdetector, a website monitoring online services.

Users have been affected all over the world, including in Europe, the United States, southern and central America, India and Australia.

According to The Verge Whatsapp rarely goes down – its last major outage being in April 2019 when it stopped working along with Facebook and Instagram for more than two hours.

Some users reported that their problem has since been resolved, but many more continue to experience hiccups.