One of the U.K.’s biggest banks, Barclays, is once again having problems with its apps, with customers unable to transfer funds or make payments.
The problems started at around 7am GMT, according to the Down Detector website, which is showing a sharp spike in reported outages.
The failure is causing big problems for customers who need to transfer money to pay for goods or services. “Trying to move money from my savings account to my current account, and it says it can’t do it as they [sic]
system is down,” reports one Barclays customer on Down Detector.
Other customers are reporting that wages or salaries haven’t appeared in their accounts, as expected.
The Barclays service status acknowledges the problem, saying: “We’re sorry, some customers may be having issues making or receiving payments at the moment. We’re working to fix this.”
Barclays Down Again
It’s the second time in a matter of weeks that Barclays has suffered a significant outage. In late January, the bank’s online services were plagued with technical issues for three days. The failure coincided with a deadline to pay income tax in the U.K., leaving many customers unable to make the necessary payments.
It was reported earlier this week that the bank would be paying up to £7.5 million in compensation to customers who were affected by the January outage. In total, it could be paying £12.5 million for all the outages that have occurred over the past couple of years, British MPs were told.
The company told MPs that the failure in January resulted in just over half of online payments failing. The failure was attributed to a “severe degradation” in the performance of the company’s mainframe computer.
In an FAQ on its website, Barclays insisted that “this was a technical issue and not related to a cyber-attack or malicious activity.”
More Banking Failures
Barclays is far from the only U.K. bank to suffer from IT failures recently. At the end of February, Lloyds, Halifax, TSB and Bank of Scotland all went down at the same time, with customers unable to log into the online banking service or use the company’s app. Many of the banks are part of the same group.
The matter was resolved within a couple of hours, although it wasn’t clear what the cause of the problem was on this occasion.
Problems with online banking services are exacerbated by the ongoing closure of many high street bank branches in the U.K., with customers often unable to visit a bank in person to make payments or take out money.
A report published earlier this year by the U.K. parliament showed that there were 21,643 bank branches in the U.K. in 1986. That number had fallen to 6,870 by 2024.
The closure of branches is hardest felt in rural areas, where only just over a third of customers are within three miles of a bank or building society branch.