Thousands of banking customers across the UK have been left unable to access their accounts after a widespread IT outage affected several major banks on Friday morning, causing significant disruption on what is payday for many.
Reports of problems with the Lloyds Bank app surged to over 4,000 on Friday morning, according to outage monitoring service Downdetector.
The technical issues have also impacted Halifax, TSB, Nationwide, First Direct, and Bank of Scotland apps.
The timing of the outage has caused particular frustration as it coincides with the last Friday of the month—traditionally payday for millions of workers across the country.
A spokesperson for Lloyds Banking Group told the BBC: “We know some customers are having issues with internet banking and our apps. We’re sorry about this and we’re working to have it back to normal soon.”
Nationwide posted on its website that “some incoming and outgoing payments are delayed at the moment,” but assured customers that “everything else is working normally.”
First Direct updated its service status to say: “We are experiencing issues with payments and working as quickly as possible to correct this.”
The disruption has left many customers unable to access their funds or make essential transactions. One frustrated Lloyds customer said: “I’ve worked two long weeks to be paid today and now I can’t access my accounts on the app or desktop site.”
Another user informed Lloyds’ social media team that they were unable to access their business account to pay their staff.
This is not the first time UK banks have faced such issues. The current outages follow a similar incident in January when Barclays’ mobile banking services went down on payday, leaving customers unable to make essential transactions for several days.
In early February, Lloyds Bank and Halifax also confirmed issues with their systems, with customers reporting problems making and receiving payments.
In response to these ongoing banking IT failures, the UK Treasury Committee has written to the chief executives of nine major banks, including Lloyds, NatWest, Santander, Nationwide, Barclays, and HSBC, seeking explanations for the IT failures, their impact on customers, and the steps being taken to prevent future disruptions.
