Millions of people were left unable to access their finances on payday after app issues swept through Britain’s banking system.
Nationwide, First Direct, Lloyds and Halifax all confirmed problems with their online banking systems on Friday, leaving many customers without access to funds on payday.
It is the second month in a row that major banks have been hit by IT issues around payday, with experts saying online banking systems often struggle with the high rate of activity as wages and bills go in and out of accounts at the end of each month.
In messages posted online, the banks said they were working to return their systems to normal.
Nationwide said in a message on its website “some incoming and outgoing payments are delayed at the moment”, but that “everything else is working normally”.
A spokesman said the lender had identified the issue caused the delays and said direct debits and standing orders were working as normal.
However, payments were in a queue and would arrive soon, adding customers do not need to do anything.
First Direct said on its website that both its mobile and online banking services were “experiencing issues with payments”.
Shortly afterwards, Lloyds and Halifax also confirmed issues with customers being unable to log in to online banking and their respective mobile banking apps.
A Lloyds spokesman said: “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.”
According to service status website DownDetector, users were reporting issues with a number of banks on Friday morning, with customers struggling to get online or move funds.
TSB also said it was having “intermittent” issues with online and mobile banking.
A spokesman for TSB said: “We’re aware of industry-wide issues this morning, and that some of our customers are unable to log into our mobile app, and internet banking. We apologise for this and are working hard to resolve it.”
At the end of last month and in early February, Barclays, Lloyds Bank and Halifax were all hit by service outages which left customers unable to access funds on or just after payday.
Keith Budden, managing director at Ensurety, warned that the latest issues showed banking tech issues were “starting to be more than just an annoying niggle, it’s now a payments pothole that needs fixing”.
He said: “There are two scenarios at work here: either banks need to massively invest in their infrastructure and systems at pace, or there is a band of bad actors (probably state-sponsored) who are getting increasingly effective at their bids to corrupt the banking network.”
Tony Redondo, founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange, added that with multiple banks hit at once, it “suggests a shared system issue”.
Chris Skinner, a fintech expert, told PA news agency in the wake of those outages that banks were finding it “too hard to keep up” with fast-moving technology.
He said: “I think the world is spinning so fast with technology that the challenge we have is no-one’s keeping up, particularly regulators and lawmakers.
“So the regulators and lawmakers need to have people who do better due diligence.
“I think there’s an issue here with reliability, service and resilience, and that’s the accountability of the people who are organising the structures, both from within the business, and those who look over the business in terms of the regulators.
“At the moment, I think both are probably finding it too hard to keep up.”
He added the vast array of modern tech systems needed to operate in the banking world today mean firms have “such a smorgasbord of things they have to work with”, the “competence of keeping up with these changes is really challenging every bank”.
Mr Skinner, who also runs industry blog The Finanser, said the flurry of outages on Fridays was likely because banks planned software updates for the quieter weekend periods.
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